Thirty Foot Drop
by CarlileLovesAnime
Summary: Historia is the seemingly perfect daughter of a wealthy noble family; Ymir, a poor woman, works in the stables on their estate. The two of them think little of each other, until one night when Ymir finds Historia sneaking out of her bedroom window.
1. i-x

**ymir/christoria is probably the best attack on titan ship tbh. i mean, it's already canon that ymir is in love with her. anyway, this fic is a big ol' sorta-steampunk-y au with oc's, a little sexual content toward the end, and a sprinkling of character death. also mentions of suicide, past drug use and self harm. and lots of drinking. **

**i've already put this story on ao3 and tumblr. figured it wouldn't hurt to post it on ffn too. here you go, friends! **

**beta-reading credits to tumblr users ascensionablaze, earthinmywindow/mirthinmywindow and yuushanoah. **

**I.**

Here at Wings of Freedom Bar and Tavern, no one speaks of what happens within the walls after they leave them. The same goes for most places around this area.

Ymir knows the score. She may not have lived in this particular town all that long, but she is still no stranger to the lifestyle. At Wings of Freedom, she has found a niche as close to perfect as possible: the third stool from the back, between one stained glass hanging light and another. She likes to observe the characters – from Levi the grouchy bartender to Daz the washed-up regular to that guy who comes in on Tuesdays wearing dark glasses and an oversized trench coat (he probably sells stuff, but Ymir's weaned herself off shit like that, thank you very much.)

Today she is able to come in right around opening time, and she sits and knocks back shots and babbles about politics to anyone with enough intelligence to debate with her, until the people flood in. And in they flood, boisterous groups and eager extroverts, a happier hour. They thicken and heat the dusty air. The smell of human bodies mixes with that of old varnish.

At this point she is far beyond coherence – or caring – and it's obvious. She is not alone in this feeling, though, and can blend in with the crowd as seamlessly as she wants.

The clearest thing amidst this fog is the sensation of someone else's lips on hers. They're smooth and needy. She tastes like wine, Ymir finds, when she shoves her tongue down the girl's throat. They hang on each other; Ymir sits the girl on her lap and they moan and touch, breathing in the stench of alcohol that comes off both of them.

Eventually she has her fill and leaves Ymir, who's too delirious to feel disappointed anyway. She stays long after the busy hours until Levi closes up shop. She doesn't know how she's going to get home, and ends up falling asleep in an alleyway a couple blocks east.

Ymir will return the next day too, to drown out the last unspeakable night and absorb another.

**II.**

People from the other side of town are a little more open, she thinks as she stacks porcelain dishes in the sink with less and less care. A little more open.

A few yards away, Connie and Sasha scrape morsels off plates to feed to the dogs tomorrow. It's a one-person job, but with the two of them it doesn't take as long, and they can blather about nothing in particular for as long as they decide to drag out the task. Ymir tries to tune them out. Unlike them, she has no friends, and would rather be home sooner than later.

Jean shuffles over to the sink beside hers and sets down the wine glasses in his arms. She takes a glance at the heaping pile of dishes she has yet to dry.

"Think you could cover for me?" she confides. "I'm gonna try to sneak out early."

He frowns at her. "No fucking way." He starts the tap running. "I've got enough to do already." He rinses out one glass at a time under the water.

Marco seems to crop up out of nowhere – he does that a lot—, sizing up what Ymir has left to do and leaning a mop against the tile wall. "I can. I'm almost done in the ballroom. Just give me a few minutes and I can take over for you."

"Cool," she says, giving him a glance over her shoulder.

Jean pauses. "Hey, if you want to take over for somebody, do it for me," he complains. Marco laughs, nudges him in the back and walks away. Jean returns to his work, muttering "douche" under his breath as he switches out glasses.

Marco finishes within minutes, and the second she notices him, she throws off her apron and slings it over the coat hook beside the pantry. She changes out of her uniform and into regular clothes without even turning on the dressing room light.

She drags herself out of the building and walks along the inside of the fence toward the gate, noting how different the impeccable landscaping looks in the dark. Admittedly she can't give a good reason for leaving so early, except that she's tired, and she's ready to be rid of the dinner party hustle and bustle. It's so late that even if she were there right now, she would only be able to stay at the bar for half an hour.

Distantly she hears something rustle in the bushes. She glares behind her in the direction of the noise, taking a second to notice the thick rope dangling from the third floor. The window is open. Ymir grits her teeth, turns on her heels and starts for the gate again.

She scoffs and chuckles to herself at the subtlety – to use the term as loosely as possible – of the thing. Working in such proximity to the wealthy, she hasn't been able to help overhearing scuttlebutt about the rising crime rate, even if most of the sources have no idea just how bad it can really be. Personally she would use a different, not-so-stupid method to steal. But it's no loss to her if the Reisses have one less piece of jewelry to never wear or one less painting to let gather dust. She decides she hasn't seen anything, and rounds the corner.

Then she stops. She turns back and watches for the thief to emerge, which they do: heaving themselves over the sill and crawling down the rope. She starts to approach, arms crossed over her chest, and stands many yards away. The thief does not seem to notice her until she speaks, when their feet hit the ground.

"You know," she says aloud – and the thief freezes, "I may not give a flying fuck about what the Reisses lose, but if they have less stuff that means they have less money, and if they have less money that means I get less money – or worse, laid off." She shuffles forward. "I simply cannot have that."

The thief hesitates a minute, letting the chirp of crickets fill the silence. Their long black cloak blends into the night. Hand still on the rope, they pivot toward Ymir and lift their head to expose the face beneath the hood.

She frowns, eyes widening, head pulling backward, and reads the thief's figure. The tiny frame, the bony shoulders, the mouse-like face. She can hardly believe what she sees.

"Historia?"

**III.**

The Reiss family supposedly settled this town a few hundred-odd years ago, and has since retained the power, status, wealth and influence that come with such a history. Its puppet strings reach far and wide. While leaders of the family have pioneered sometimes-outlandish customs for their class – e.g. engaging in philanthropy, sharing their resources with the common people, hiring mere peasants to work for them and allowing those peasants to rise through the social ranks with time –, its members are no less blue-blooded than those of any other noble family. They love the arts, horses, and nine-course dinner parties.

Historia, the youngest and only female child of Magdalena and current patriarch Simon, has a rather appropriate name for her role, being the epitome of all things for which the Reiss family has stood. She sings soprano, plays the violin, paints, reads, dances ballet, and cares for her horse. She also does those little unconventional things people in her family do, like buy school supplies for peasant children and actually thank wait staff when they bring her food. As if the blond hair, clear blue eyes, small stature and sugary smile were not enough to indicate her Reiss-ness.

To be honest Ymir has never considered her much. Most of her low-level job at the estate involves keeping the stables (though, on nights like tonight, she's on-call for other tasks) and she sees Historia about as often as she sees the other residents and members of the Reiss court. Based on a few months' observation, Ymir thinks of her as kindhearted, but fragile and rather shallow. A glittering, glorified personification of her class, her town, her parents' wishes.

**IV.**

"Historia?" Ymir cocks one eyebrow and furrows the other, and her arms slacken.

The girl jumps at the mention of her name. Her free arm scrambles out from beneath the cloak, waves around and covers her mouth. Ymir's frown deepens when she shushes her.

"Please don't tell anyone," Historia begs.

Ymir throws her hands in the air and takes half a step backward. "Hey, it ain't my business in the first place."

Historia stands there a short moment to regard Ymir, eyes scanning her to gauge her loyalty or maybe try to remember why she recognizes her. Ymir drops her hands to her sides, eyes fixed on her shapeless black cloak.

"Thank you, Ymir," Historia whispers. She lets go of the rope, gathers herself into the cloak, wades through the landscaping and slinks away.

Relaxing her muscles, Ymir takes a minute to absorb the details. She ducks forward and cranes her neck upward to get a good view of the third-story window. The rope runs through a small hole in the frame and wraps around a pulley wheel hung from the valence on the other side. As she observes, the rope already starts to slide back upward. She can't make out many further details from here, but there looks to be some sort of weight at the other end of the pulley system, and even more strings attached to automatically close the panes and draw the curtains. Somebody's taken the time to set up a pretty extensive rigging system. Between that, the huge tree blocking the view of Historia's bedroom window from outsiders, and the exceptions the security machines make for residents, right now, Ymir is the only possible thing that could go wrong.

She nods at the setup and then squints into the distance. The girl has nearly made her way to the back gate.

"Hey, Historia," she calls.

Historia immediately freezes, and turns around. "Yes?"

"My silence isn't free."

Really, someone as seemingly prepared for this stunt as Historia couldn't have expected to get off this easily. Ymir pulls her lips taut and stares her down, slipping her hands into the wide pockets of her trousers.

Historia hesitates, but finally asks, "What do you want?"

"Convince Keith to give me a raise," Ymir demands.

Of course Ymir has no idea what she would do with the money. She probably shouldn't even take it: most of her pay is wasted on alcohol anyway. But in her experience, having at least a little extra money – even if it holds no particular purpose – is certainly better than not, and she would be a fool to pass up such an opportunity.

Historia gives her a small smile and her hood moves up and down with a nod. "I will be sure to talk with him tomorrow," she says. She makes a move to turn around, a mere couple yards from the exit – but throws a "thank you" over her shoulder at Ymir before slipping out of the gate.

She stands there a minute, wondering about so many hows and whats and whys, shrugs her shoulders and watches the rope fully retreat into the window.

God is she tired. Down the road she gives a cart driver two doubloons to get her a block from her apartment. She gets in and locks the door, sprawls onto her bed, and spends many minutes staring strangely awake at the ceiling before sleep crashes onto her.

**V.**

The whole block seems to freeze when the train roars by, its rumbling and blowing shaking the ground and drowning out every other noise. People grab their drinks off the tables to keep them from falling off the edge. Even Levi stops and stands frowning behind the counter until the train is far enough away for activity to resume.

"What was that?" he asks, cocking an eyebrow. He spins a beer mug in one hand and drags a rag along the inside of it with another. The din of patrons' conversations slowly fills the background. A man in overalls forces a coin into the music player, and it grinds through pathways and sends the gears cranking, and brass-heavy swing ekes out of the speakers.

She feels a headache push at her temples, and shuts her eyes and grinds her teeth to will it away. "Brandy," she says.

Levi gives her a curt nod, pulls the rag out of the mug and holds the mug under a tap. He gives the dark beer to an elderly man fiddling with a watch.

"Rough day, huh?" The man sitting beside him turns toward Ymir, cocking his head.

She leans, stretching her back. "Not really," she says. "My mind just happened to be in a dark place all day, and I wanna wash it out."

The man nods. "Yeah, my wife just screamed me out of the house a few hours ago," he says. He swipes up his glass of beer, sips from it and sighs.

Ymir makes no effort to be polite, facing forward and resting her cheek in her hand. Yet he remains completely clueless about the fact that she's not listening. Levi slides a glass of golden brandy right to her. She picks it up by the stem and brings the rim to her lips, but does not drink.

"…I'm trying my best, you know, working hard day and night so she and our son and daughter can have a good life – and I do one thing wrong and she screams at me. She doesn't even work, just stays home with the kids all day." He presses his palm to his forehead. "I don't even know what I did…"

She swigs the brandy straight down her throat all at once. The burn of the alcohol hits her hard, and she bites her lip and squeezes her eyes shut until it passes.

The man's wallowing anecdote comes to a stop. "You all right, lady?" he asks. He ducks his head to look at her face.

She grunts, forces open her eyes and burps out a "yeah." She blinks a few times at the honey-colored residue pooled at the bottom of the glass. Gritting her teeth, she stands from the stool – dizzy, whoa – and starts to dig through her pants pocket. "Just bored." She smacks a coin onto the bar counter. Levi seems to teleport to it instantly. He sweeps a hand over it, almost vacuuming it up, his expression still flat as ever.

Ymir bends slightly to look the chatty man in the eyes. "Maybe you could use your 'hard-earned money' to buy flowers or some shit for your fucking wife instead of wasting it on a pint of second-rate beer while you complain to people who don't care."

The man's mouth hangs open, uncomprehending, and the mechanist beside him throws Ymir a glance as she breezes out of the bar. The instant the door closes behind her, the static-y jazz music ceases.

She stands at the edge of the sidewalk for a minute or two and stares down the street at the signs, the window views, the people passing and talking and filing in and out. The post-dusk air has a thick powder blue feeling to it. Most of the gaslights are on. All she knows is that she does not want to go home yet.

She skulks along the block, reading signs when she comes to them. A jerryshop, a pub, a hookah lounge (she tried the lounge once, but the other customers were just so obnoxious), another bar. It gets dark before she even realizes, and slowly feeling more open-minded, she turns the corner to the next block, where most of the buildings stand alone. She's starting to notice a decline in the number of children out and about.

Somewhere partway down Zacklay Road, she finds The Oasis.

It's not quite clear what the place is, but something about the blinking lights around the façade and the fact that she sees somebody walk into the building about every thirty seconds intrigues her. Ymir struts through the front door and into the entry room, where a scantily clad hostess grins at her.

"Hi, there," she says, sounding so cheery this must be rehearsed. "Table for how many?"

Ymir squints beyond the doorway. She sees a huge amount of people – mostly men – packed into a densely furnished dining room. Tables have burgundy cloths down to the floor and little candle centerpieces; the walls are wooden paneling, and brass chandeliers hang from the ceiling. The curtain is closed around a stage at the back.

"One."

She turns back toward the hostess, who holds a menu to her chest and grins wider. "Okey-dokey! Follow me, then." And she follows her around the perimeter of the room, taking in more of the sights.

Nearly naked servers. A band tuning its instruments at a platform beside the stage. Customers laughing, drinking, smoking, eating appetizers. The hostess seats Ymir at a booth at the very edge of the room, since that's one of the only spots left in the house. She sets the one-page menu down in front of her, tells her a waiter will come soon, and scurries back to the entry room.

Ymir's eyes go straight to the list of drinks, and she hedges between ordering more brandy or just some scotch before deciding to wait a while for her current buzz, however slight it is, to wear off a little.

The band begins to play a plucky, bouncy tune that somehow makes her feel embarrassed. The second it ends, the curtain parts, the chandeliers dim and a spotlight shows on a lone woman, standing on the stage and wearing a jacketless pantsuit.

"Gia sas!" she exclaims, flinging her arms open, and everyone cheers.

Ymir leans over the table as if she would gain a better angle on the stage by doing so.

"My name is Hanji Zoe," she says. The noise dies down and her voice carries well. She paces a few steps to the side of the stage. "I am your MC and host—" She stops and looks the audience dead in the center. "—And have we got a show for you tonight, ladies and gents."

The crowd starts to cheer again. Ymir cocks her head, scans the MC up and down, and wonders, Is this a burlesque house?

"We at The Oasis have the best talent in town when the sun goes down," Hanji says, pacing again, "But before we show 'em off, I have just one little rule." She flashes an index finger and smiles. "They are nice to look at, and they're nice to listen to – but you can't touch 'em. And that goes for after the show, too. Got it?"

Her disclaimer is met with an approving din.

She stops and stands firmly at the center of the stage, and claps her hands together. "Now, without further ado, I will introduce tonight's stars."

A shirtless man saunters up to Ymir's table and leans toward her. She whispers that she doesn't want anything for now, but would like to keep the menu, and he nods and scampers away to the next guest.

Six human-sized figures tiptoe onto stage behind the MC, all of them covered head to toe with black cloaks. "Annie!" Hanji jumps to the side and gestures toward the covered person closest to Ymir's side of the room. One cover is shed – its ice blue silk underside flashing to the crowd as it falls – and now standing on top of it is a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman with an intense expression, who strikes a pose in her fur-lined top, skirt and boots. The audience goes wild.

Yup, this is a burlesque house. Ymir lifts her elbows onto the table, lays her jaw in her hands, and smiles a little.

"Mina!" A woman with dark pigtails and a short red dress. "Hannah!" A tall red-haired woman. "Mikasa!" A woman with a scar underneath her right eye and well-developed abdominal muscles. "Petra!" A woman with a big grin on her face. "Christa!"

The final lady to shed her cover and reveal herself is small in frame. Her legs are toned. She wears an ornately jeweled top that ends at the bottom of her ribcage and a mostly sheer skirt draped around her hips. She lifts her arms and the bangles around her wrists fall almost to her elbows. Her face is pretty but childish, heated with a seductive smile; her hair is black and down just past her jawline, and there is a large beauty mark on her left cheekbone.

Ymir's eyes widen. She opens her mouth and lifts her head from her palms, staring at Christa. When the realization hits her, her breath catches in her throat. She shakes her head vigorously and throws her head back to study the ceiling for a moment, sure what she sees cannot be true.

But as the band strikes up and starts the first musical number, Ymir finds herself watching. The ballerina-like movements she passes off as coincidence. Many girls have soprano singing voices – that must be a coincidence, too.

It takes nearly a whole song's worth of doubting for Ymir to get a good enough look at Christa's face. By then, there is no mistake. Either Historia Reiss and Christa the dancer are the same person, or there is some weird doppelganger shit going on around here.

The crowd roars into frenzy at the end of the number, some even standing. The six ladies prance off the stage as an interlude begins. Ymir flags down the waiter from before and tells him to bring her a shot of tequila, because tonight is going to be even more interesting than aiding the escape three nights before.

**VI.**

There's something deeply satisfying about spending every bit of her bonus on fruity cocktails at The Oasis, Ymir has found, though she's still not sure whether this whole Historia-Christa thing is meaningful or hilarious. Either way, now when she's shoveling horse shit into noxious piles and Historia is out leading her palomino around the corral, sometimes Ymir stops and stares and pictures her in scant pinup. After a minute or two she catches herself, laughs it off and keeps shoveling.

If Historia has at all noticed Ymir's presence at the club nearly every night, Ymir still wouldn't know any better. One Friday night, after spending a little more than her recent pay, Ymir decides to officially make her presence known.

In the chaos that ensues in the dining room right after the final performance, she weaves through the crowd, picking out an exact victim. (That idiot Franz, or whatever his name is, another regular, has been harping on Hannah this whole time and keeps getting rejected; tonight he's brought carnations as if they will help any more than they did in the last attempt, but Ymir figures she can just save him the trouble right now and in the process not let perfectly good flowers go to waste on someone who won't care for them.) She subtly bumps into him and apologizes, yanking the bouquet off the man's table. Judging from the dark pink rims around his eyes, he definitely does not notice.

She sneaks backstage. The floor here is concrete and covered in sand, dust and shed hair. Three of the four walls are totally lined with costumes. The performers are in various stages of undoing: some are hopping into their casual clothes, while others are still dressed up and either chatting with Hanji or taking off the makeup they so meticulously applied a few hours before. Christa is one of the latter. She sits at her own vanity station, leaning close to the mirror, scrubbing the ruby red lipstick off her lips with a kerchief.

Ymir starts to approach as soon as she spots her, careful to not let anyone else see that she has intruded. She stops a few feet behind Christa, out of view of her mirror. And gazes at her a moment. She notices things she had would have never seen at further distances, like the sheen of leftover sweat on the back of Christa's bare shoulders, the tiny snags along the hem of her satin corset, the immaculately realistic look of the wig that completely covers her blond hair, the fact that her earrings are clip-ons.

Christa, unknowing, lowers the cloth from her lips – which are now red with irritation –, looks straight into her own eyes and heaves a deep sigh. Even beneath all the rouge and foundation, she looks washed-out and, in a word, exhausted.

This is when Ymir makes her move. She lays the bouquet sideways on the edge of the vanity surface, at the same time saying, "Great job tonight," in the most sarcastic way she can muster, as she's unable to admit just how much she enjoyed it.

Christa whips her head in Ymir's direction and immediately gasps and tenses. "Ymir—!"

Ymir's lips pull back into a toothy smirk. "Historia," she teases.

Christa shoots to her feet, blue eyes wide, and her arms fly toward Ymir but stop and wave around.

"Not so loud," she whispers hoarsely. "No one here knows who I really am except for Hanji."

Consciously Ymir closes her mouth, joins the tips of her thumb and index finger and drags them across her lips. Christa stands frozen there for another minute, examining Ymir's expression, before easing back down onto the vanity bench.

"You don't have to be so jumpy," Ymir says. Christa holds back a frown.

She regards the red and white carnations, glances at Ymir and then returns to the mirror. She dips her finger in a jar of petroleum jelly and smears it all over the area of her eyes, one eye at a time. The shadow, liner and mascara blend together. She wipes it all off with the kerchief, speaking again: "How did you find me?"

"I didn't follow you or anything creepy, if that's what you're asking," Ymir says. "It was a coincidence."

Christa sucks her lips partway inside her mouth but does not say anything. She switches the kerchief to her other eye, dragging it over the lid. Her tenseness is still palpable from a few feet away.

Another performer – Mikasa, if Ymir remembers right – saunters past, a simple and conservative white dress flowing behind her ankles, and sits at the vanity right beside Christa's. Ymir pivots a bit to get a view of the girl in her peripheral, and at the same time Mikasa glares up at her with cool fire in her nearly solidly black eyes. Their eyes stay locked on one another for a moment.

Christa leans forward to look at Mikasa. "She's with me," she explains.

Mikasa's eyes stay on her for a few more seconds before she turns away, sighs quietly, and begins to scrub the rouge off her cheeks.

"Do you want to take this outside?" Christa suggests. Ymir nods. Christa rises from the bench and the girls snake their way through the room.

Hanji, her face taut with suspicion, stops Christa by touching her hand to her shoulder. The two of them exchange mumbles briefly – Ymir doesn't notice or stop until they're already done, and at that they slink out the back door. The alley behind the building has no light at all.

"How much have you seen?" Christa stammers.

Ymir cocks her head to think of some sort of articulation. "Only as much as you've shown," she lilts.

Christa frowns at the answer. Ymir slides her hands into her trouser pockets, shoulders hunching, and lifts her chin. "Your disguise isn't bad, you know," she says. "Do you just draw that mole on with charcoal?"

Her hand flies to the beauty mark on her cheekbone – "Yes, I do."

"And where did you get that wig?"

"It's made from real human hair," Christa says. "One of my father's associates' wife had her hair cut by our barber, and afterward I asked her for the leftover hair and wove it myself."

"Gross," Ymir mutters, holding back a shudder. Christa bows her head and starts to twiddle her thumbs. "Won't people start to suspect something, though, when they realize that your hair doesn't grow?"

Christa's head perks up, and she blinks into the thick darkness. "They probably will," she says. She collects herself. "No one has said anything so far. Granted, I've been doing this for only about six months." She flexes her knuckles and then meshes and unmeshes her fingers.

Ymir nods. "Six months, wow," she marvels under her breath.

"How long have you been watching me?" Christa's expression hardens, but fear drips from her voice.

A minute passes for Ymir to think on this, contorting her eyebrows and lips. How long has it been – three weeks? Four? – since she discovered this place? The nights seem to run together. She lifts her hands out of her pockets, crosses her arms over her chest, and shifts most of her weight onto one leg, cocking her hips.

"Long enough for you to know that I can keep my mouth shut," she finally responds.

Through the darkness she can tell Christa is grinding her teeth: the movement of her jaw muscles show even with the wig covering her temples. She lifts a hand and covers half her face with it, and her eyes close. The mood between them drops like a rock off the side of a bridge.

"Listen, Christa—" Ymir starts, and Christa lowers her hand and beams her eyes directly up at her.

"Listen," she begins again, "I may not know exactly what your situation is, but I'm a big believer in letting people be themselves. And if you would rather be Christa than Historia Reiss, then so be it. It's your identity."

"Thank you," Christa says. An incredulous smile eases over her lips. "I did not think anyone would understand."

"You're lucky you've got me, then," Ymir jokes.

The two of them stand silent in the dark for another moment, each trying to ignore the gravity of the other.

"I am going to head back inside," Christa says in a mouselike voice. She heads toward the door.

Ymir clears her throat, stopping Christa in her tracks. Christa peers over her shoulder at Ymir, who meets her eyes.

"You still haven't gotten Keith to give me the bonus you said he would the other night," she says.

"I have been lobbying him." Christa turns further. "It will take a little time. Apparently, you are a competent but disrespectful worker."

Ymir frowns. "I ain't that bad," she says defensively.

Christa only replies, "I need to change wardrobe," faces forward and disappears inside.

She reemerges several minutes later with her cloak donned and the bouquet in hand, and Ymir is waiting for her at the base of the steps.

**VII.**

Keith trudges out of the stable for a bucket but stops in his tracks in the doorway, squinting into the sun, mouth hanging open. "No way," he whispers, and he starts out of the building.

Ymir stands there observing him until he leaves. She starts to sweep again. The sound of a motor grows louder and louder, and she frowns at it, sets the broom against the wall, and ventures outside.

A two-person plane touches down on the strip of grass just outside the corral. The engine shuts off. Keith stands beside the slowing propellers with his hands on his hips. Out of the cockpit comes a short man, and he takes off his cap and goggles as he descends the stairs.

"Well, I'll be damned," Keith says. "Mister Walter."

The man reaches the ground and approaches Keith, extending a hand. Keith grabs it and they shake and smirk at each other in a manly way. "I've told you, call me Walt."

Furrowing her eyebrows at him, Ymir chances a bit closer, and watches them from many yards away. Some other stable workers also notice the plane – they would have been dumb not to –, having gathered in a crowd at a similar distance.

The plane is sturdy and simplistic, a well-built machine. The windshield is tall. The paint job is even. If anything, the front, bottom and propellers of the plane are a little dirty. Albatrocity is written in winding cursive on the side.

"Your family is going to drop dead when they see you," Keith says, letting go of the hand. "Did you tell them you were coming?"

"I'm sure they will. And no, I did not. I figured it would be a pleasant surprise." Walt tugs the thin leather gloves off his hands and then begins to shrug off his jacket as well. Keith quietly offers to take them, but Walt insists it's not necessary.

"Walt!"

He turns and immediately grins and leans low. "Historia!" Opening his arms, he takes a few steps forward before colliding with the sprinting girl, wrapping his arms around her, picking her up off the ground and spinning her. "Darling!" He eases out of the motion and lets her down gently.

Keith glares over his shoulder at the other stable workers, motioning with his chin for them to return to work. Ymir slinks back to the stable as slowly as she can. She keeps her eyes on the two through the opening in the wall.

"My God, I've missed you," Historia says. "What are you doing here?"

He musses her hair. "It's a long story – but I am glad to be back. Out of everyone in our family, I have missed you the most, my dear sister." Her grin only grows wider.

She grabs his wrist and guides it off the top of her head, and then pulls on it and starts to walk toward the manor. "Come in, please! Let us tell Mother, Father and Adair you are here!"

He erupts into laughter as she drags him along.

Ymir has always considered herself a good judge of character, and until recently thought she was able to tell when Historia genuinely meant something and when she was just saving face. Such a thing has become understandably more difficult. She watches Historia barrage her brother with information, scampering by his side into the building, her ornate pink dress moving with her very emotion.

Keith smacks Ymir on the back. "Get to work."

**VIII.**

As Ymir learns in short order, Walter Reiss, the oldest of the three Reiss children, has hair as blond and eyes as blue as the rest of his family's. But where the others' eccentricities still fall within noble custom, his expand unfathomably beyond. The man is a military veteran and now a perpetually single, world-traveling, crazy-adventure-having pilot; the family jokes that, during his service, the "wandering bug" must have bitten him. He comes home only when he feels tired (and patient) enough to let his parents hound him for being everything he is, while he smiles and makes them empty promises of compliance.

And Historia adores him. (The brother Adair between them, not so much, but he can find his humor elsewhere for all they care.) She feels more comfortable around Walt than she does around anyone else at the Reiss estate. The two of them whisper and giggle and tease as if they see each other every day. Ymir watches them when she can. She notices the brightness in Historia's eyes, the way she laughs from the gut and smiles so purely, something she's never seen Historia – as Historia, at least – do. It's a thrilling sight, and it gives her a strange, hot, bubbly sensation in the stomach that she hasn't yet decided whether she likes or not.

At dinner that night he announces he has gifts for everyone. A hand-painted tea set for his mother, a rifle with an ivory handle for his father, a standing shade for his brother, and beautiful silk dresses for his sister and sister-in-law. He says he could not visit the Orient and come back empty-handed. Ymir is there to witness when he unveils a gift for the entire family, a heavy contraption he picked up from a mechanic friend in Italy.

Magdalena squints at the thing. "What is it?" she asks, her voice harsh.

"He called it a 'typewriter'," Walt explains. He strokes a hand over the top of it. "See, with this you can write down messages to other people, but instead of using a pen, you just press these little buttons." He demonstrates by clicking one of them down with his fingertip. "Each button represents a symbol, and when you press it, that symbol is inked onto the paper that you feed through the top." He goes on to show them, with much enthusiasm, how much faster typing is than hand-writing, how each symbol is uniform, how to work the ink cartridges, how to change the paper's position, and everything else. He leaves them rather dumbfounded, for the most part.

"Does it require steam?" Historia asks.

Walt grins and puts his hands on his hips. "No, it does not." Historia and her mother find the "typewriter" amazing, while Adair says, "That seems rather unnecessary – we already hand-write messages, so isn't that enough?" Historia gives him a frown and a punch in the arm, and Walt laughs and tells Adair he's not allowed to use it, then.

Through the evening he regales them with accounts of his adventures, tales of exotic creatures, disastrous monsoon floods, interesting natives and awe-inspiring landscapes. Historia hangs on his every word.

When the meal finally ends, he pulls her aside and whispers something in her ear. She eases back, staring wide-eyed and incredulous at him, and slowly nods. She barely stops herself from jumping up and down. He grins.

"Meet me tomorrow at the field behind the gardener's shed," Ymir can make out of what he says. He claps her on the side of her shoulder and she responds with an eager nod and scampers away.

Ymir, trying not to be conspicuous in her spying, grits her teeth, brings the bowls stuffed under her arms into the kitchen, and sets them down beside a sink.

**IX.**

The stables at the Reiss estate can be a place of dangerous secrets, if one has the mind to seek them. The indication that something is going on comes when Ymir sees Wynonna, austere Adair Reiss' equally stiff (and until now Ymir honestly thought to be mute) wife, taking Historia for ride-talks – something she would never have done before. Ymir does not like the look on Historia's face every time they return, but does not really have the opportunity to ask her about it.

At least, not to ask Historia about it.

She's taken up escorting Christa from the club to a place near the Reiss estate every night after the show ends. (Tonight's theme was A Night in Asia, which Christa suggested – and for which she provided a few props – and Hanji couldn't refuse.) She waits for Christa to change clothes and scrub the layers of chemical junk off her face, and then they walk through the dark streets together, discussing politics and philosophy and other things neither of them gets to express often. Things hardly ever get personal, between their mutual no-questions-asked policy toward one another's motives and the vast amount of differences in their backgrounds.

"You want to know about what Wynonna and I talk?" Christa asks for reassurance. Ymir shrugs and nods and says, "Yeah."

Christa sucks on her lips and faces forward. Her hood is pulled up over her black wig. From this angle, Ymir cannot see the exact expression on her face.

"She just tells me about her family and Adair and everything," she answers. "It is rather boring, and sometimes she can be preachy."

Ymir snorts to hold back a laugh. "Really? She seems like the type."

Christa nods. "I had thought, when I first met her and knew she was betrothed to my brother, that she and I could be friends. But…" She lets out a low moaning hum, cocks her head, and fiddles a bit with her cloak. "She is very cold, and fake, and holds no real, unique opinions on anything."

"So, she's basically been brainwashed," Ymir asserts.

"Basically."

They walk a few feet, Christa's short-legged bounds keeping in stride with Ymir's long-legged saunter.

"Well, she may not be interesting, but if nothing else," Ymir suggests, "She can push out some blond-haired, blue-eyed babies to continue the Reiss line."

"It seems as though that is all she was ever groomed to do," Historia says.

Ymir starts to laugh again and agree, but catches the solemnity in Historia's voice and stops herself. Heaviness settles in the air between them.

**X.**

Again Ymir sees Historia coming, but this time she's alone and has her hair up and is wearing trousers – yes, trousers. Such a sight catches her off-guard. She drops what she's doing and sneaks around the outside of the stables, counting her every step until she turns a corner.

She clenches her fists to counteract the pounding in her chest. She's not supposed to give a shit about what Historia does that doesn't involve her. That's not the Ymir way.

She skulks back into the stables, trying and failing to not wonder too much. Moments pass before she hears the sound of a motor. She pokes her head out the window, and Albatrocity tears across a strip of grass and lifts into the air. With two people inside. Ymir watches it take off, and a wide smile creeps onto her face. The plane loop-de-loops and swings from side to side and leaves a thin trail of cloud in its wake. She cannot look away. It flies so far that she can barely see it by the time the pilot decides to turn around.

The plane lands soundly and the engine shuts off. Ymir is able to make out voices, but not the words they say. At last Historia comes around the corner again – and Ymir ducks behind a doorway and pretends to not have seen everything, until Historia gets reasonably close. She pivots around the wall with her arms crossed over her chest.

Historia's hair, once in a tight bun, now falls loose and frizzy all over. There are red lines on her face from the goggles she wore. She cannot stop beaming, and neither can Ymir.

"Enjoy the ride?" Ymir says. She swears she has to catch her breath a bit.

Historia gives her several small, earnest nods. Her little body quivers from trying to contain so much excitement. "Being in the air is so different from being on a horse or in a car," she says, and she shakes her head in the most meaningful way, her eyes bright and otherworldly.

She walks away, her legs wobbly and arms stiffly bent in front of her. She closes her eyes for just a second and tries to imagine the wind and the cold and how cathartic they must feel.

Walt's darker blond hair is also a mess from the hat he has just removed, and his facial hair is scruffier and perpetual smile is bigger than usual. He gives her an acknowledging nod as he passes.


	2. xi-xx

**please read the notes at the end. **

**XI.**

Tonight, like many other nights, the kitchen is in chaos. Staff members dance about the room, from station to station, busying themselves with everything they are asked to do. Through two sets of French doors, however, the dining room is quiet and civilized. Table candelabras burn dim light, and the people inside bunchy gowns and stiff suits occasionally exchange pleasantries.

"I consider it truly an honor that you decided to come here," one patriarch says, tilting his head as he lifts his glass of wine.

Another raises his as well. "Believe me, the pleasure is all mine." They touch glasses, making a quiet clink, retract them to their lips and drink barely noticeable amounts.

Mrs. Reiss turns toward her daughter and the young man sitting across the table from her. "Historia," she suggests, "How about you show Master Reiner the house?"

Historia hesitates a minute, eyes on her mother, before nodding with a small "okay" and rising to her feet. One of the wait staff rushes toward her to pull out her chair, but she waves at them to say she does not need the help. She takes the fabric of her skirt in her fists and begins to walk.

The Braun family is new money compared to the Reiss family, but just as benevolent and even more eccentric. Ephraim and Olivia Braun deal in manufacturing plants for war materiel. And, naturally, they mandated that their three sons enlist in the military for a stint. Eldest son Reiner returned home less than a year ago, which was also around the time the Brauns and Reisses started to interact. In fact, every one of the Reiss' recent dinner parties has been rather Braun-focused. Simon and Ephraim smoke cigars and talk money, Walt and Reiner trade war stories, and Magdalena and Olivia at some point in the night relate how neither of them cares for red meat.

Historia throws a look at Reiner. "Would you like to go?" she beckons. He nods and stands, and Walt taps him on the shoulder on his way out. Reiner leans down toward him, listens as he whispers, and replies. Historia waits for him outside the dining room doors. The two of them walk side-by-side through the corridor in awkward silence, consciously making sure to not touch each other. When they reach the foot of the staircase, Reiner offers to help her climb it, but she does not take his assistance.

She starts to dictate which halls and doors lead where, but realizes in short order that Reiner's mind is not entirely present, so she stops and decides to lead him to her bedroom instead. She gives a small smile to Connie, the housekeeper who sees them go into the room, before shutting the door. She breezes past him and sits on one of the overstuffed armchairs in the corner.

He looks around a bit at the wardrobe, the four-post bed, the bookshelf full of trinkets. "Those are some nice flowers," he says, gesturing at the vase on the vanity.

She looks toward them. "Are they not lovely? They're carnations."

He faces her, raising his eyebrows. "Have you a secret admirer?" he teases.

He saunters over to the other chair and sits on the edge of the seat, back straight and hands gripping the ends of the arms. She chuckles, her eyes still on the flowers. For a moment her mind wanders.

"Of sorts," she lilts.

"Well, even so…" He trails off. He inches backward in the chair but does not relax one bit.

Historia presses her upper back against the back of the chair, crosses her legs under her dress, and heaves a sigh. The gold-gilded cuckoo clock on the wall near her desk pulsates with a ticking sound. Reiner sniffles, leans forward, and puts his elbows on his kneecaps.

"What do you think they are discussing downstairs?" he asks quietly. His eyes are aimed into space. She glances down and notices that his leg is bobbing.

"I have no idea," she says.

Which is, as they both innately know, a lie.

All at once Reiner half-sighs-half-groans and throws his torso backward, flinging his head toward the ceiling. His arms sprawl to his sides. His leg movement intensifies.

"You know, Historia," he says after a while, "I do believe this is the first time you and I have ever spoken to each other with no one else near."

She thinks on this a minute, pressing her fingertips together and furrowing her eyebrows. "You're right," she mumbles.

His head rolls onto its side and hangs off the top of the chair's back. His light brown eyes pierce straight into her.

"I have always thought you were a beautiful person, Historia. Inside and out. You seem almost godlike."

She blinks at him, and a tiny smile creeps onto her lips. "Thank you," she whispers. She has to look away for a few seconds before facing him again. "I think you are wonderful, too."

His lips curl back. "You're just saying that." But he lets out a negating chuckle and brings his attention to the ceiling again.

The tiny bell inside the cuckoo clock begins to chime. They can hear the gears whirring inside the machine, the little bouts of steam puffing out holes and narrow pipes, the pendulum beating. A tiny brass bird lunges out of its nest and tweets one, four, nine times.

**XII.**

Ymir spots Historia striding toward the stables one afternoon; the horse trainer breaks from her to retrieve her glistening palomino Vega. It's a daily occurrence, and Ymir shrugs it off and keeps working, until she can feel Historia's presence within yards of her. She looks up.

Historia gets so close that their elbows graze for a split second. Ymir doesn't even have time to react or wonder, as Historia pulls a large wad of notes out of her sleeve and shoves it into Ymir's sternum, glancing about all the while.

"This is yours," she whispers. "I know we made an agreement, but I cannot take back my word on giving you a bonus for keeping my dirty laundry, and I failed to impress Keith. I earned this myself. Take it."

Ymir cocks an eyebrow at her and hesitantly puts her free hand on the money. "W—" She decides to shut up and stuff the wad into her trouser pocket while the coast is still clear. Historia inches away from her, but she leans and squints down at her to look into her face. "I didn't think you kept the money you got from dancing," she says.

"Well, I have been saving it," Christa replies as if offended. "What would make you think I do not want it?"

True, Ymir holds the belief that more money is always better than less, even if it is not earmarked. But Historia is the only daughter of a wealthy and prominent noble family. She could have anything she wants if she so much as breathes about it. Spare change has no use to her except maybe as something to throw at beggars.

"Don't you just dance for the hell of it?" Ymir says with a shrug.

"It is for fun, of course, but if I were only looking for fun I would have picked something less scandalous to do." She throws more glances in all directions, and then takes a very small step in Ymir's direction, cranes her neck and cups her hand around the side of her mouth. Ymir leans downward to listen.

"I am going to run away."

Ymir immediately stands tall and snaps her head back. She tries to keep a composed expression, but her eyebrows and lips shift into some strange positions between frowning and dropping her jaw.

"When?" Ymir says.

Historia eases off her toes onto her heels, and quietly answers, "Sometime. I am not entirely sure."

"And how are you going to pull that off?" Ymir asks.

"I do not have a plan in place just yet, but I will create one," she says.

At this she cuts herself short and pivots a bit, slapping her open hands together in front of her, hunching her shoulders and angling her bright blue puppy eyes upward. "Will you please promise to not tell anybody?"

For a moment Ymir stares hard at her to digest what she's just said. Why anyone in Historia's situation would want to leave status, riches and power behind is at first beyond her comprehension. This girl has no idea what she is getting into, even with all of her exposure to the questionable burlesque house crowd.

Ymir smirks deeply and smacks a hand on top of Historia's head, which gets a small "ow" out of her.

"You know, you are a lot smarter than I used to think you were," she says, "But you sure can still be stupid, sometimes."

Historia frowns. "What do you mean?"

Ymir lowers her face to Historia's level, grabbing the brim of her bonnet and shaking it a bit. "Letting me in on a huge secret and then asking me to not tell anyone? I can understand doing that if I find out accidentally, but. Come on."

Adventure-thirsty Christa may be an on-stage success, but she would most definitely struggle to survive offstage.

"I just thought you seemed like the type of person I could trust," Historia mumbles, but her tone deepens and her eyes narrow.

Suddenly Ymir jerks Historia toward her, until their bodies nearly touch, and brings their faces close.

"Tell you what," she says. Her voice is low – and in a second, a warm feeling washes over her skin. "I won't spill the beans."

Historia's face softens and flushes with relief. "Oh, thank—"

"But when you leave, I'm coming with you."

Ymir stares at Historia as her face tenses again and her eyes search for a response, a reason. She stands straight and backs away, peeling her fingers off Historia's hat.

Her clear blue eyes ease upward and straight into Ymir's. "Why would you want to do that?" she asks, her voice steady.

Ymir opens her mouth – but stops her inhale short, her body frozen. She catches herself, swallowing hard and lifting her index finger, and says, "Who knows? Maybe you and I are alike."

For a moment or two she studies Ymir. Her thick and strawlike brown hair, her daunting height and build, the unapologetic way of wearing this ragged uniform, the scars and freckles and other marks on her tanned skin.

"I would not say that, necessarily," Historia cautions, "But…" She consciously returns to Ymir's golden-brown eyes. "I suppose I am not in the position to reject you."

At this she turns on her heels, her dress twirling around her with the movement, and starts in the direction of Vega's handler. She casts a look over her shoulder at Ymir.

"I actually rather look forward to it," she admits. She smiles a little smile and is gone.

Ymir hits her hand hard against her sternum, as if to tell her heart to stop beating so fast. She shuffles through the hay to the back corner of the closest empty stall, removes the bills from her pocket, hunches over them, and rifles through the bills to count them.

The bonus is nearly twice as much as her regular salary.

Her eyes widen at the money, which seems to emanate its own light in the shadows of this old stable. She counts a second time and adds in every different way in her head, just to be sure her numbers are correct. Her hands tingle at the very presence of the notes.

As if someone is watching, she wads them back up and shoves them deep into her pocket. She smiles without realizing, and pads over to the work she started before – and all the while, she cannot escape the thoughts of what she could buy with all this money. She could save it, just as Historia does. She could buy a nice, thick jacket for the winter, like the one she has seen in the window of that pawnshop next to Levi's bar. She could actually buy Christa flowers instead of just stealing them.

She thinks of how much booze this could buy.

**XIII.**

The estate staff, collectively, is starting to think that the Reiss' social life is getting ridiculous. It's not a dinner party this time but a gala, with every noble family in the country – and then some – in attendance. The air throughout the first floor of the mansion is filled with the smells of fine spirits and metal, and there is a pervasive feeling of pretention and some big knowledge that everyone seems to have, except for Ymir.

She weaves through the crowd with a half-corked bottle of wine in hand, pouring for anyone who waves for her. She looks actively for Historia – somebody who could alleviate her boredom with this work, because she's so tired of being poised and composing the dark clouds in the back of her mind and good Lord she wants to chug this whole bottle down – but cannot see her, cursing the short stature that dominates the Reiss bloodline.

A man chatting up two curly-haired ladies flags Ymir down. The neatly combed hair and starchy suit throw her off at first, but the permastubble and smirk clue her in that he can be no one other than Walter Reiss.

"Hello, Ymir." He holds up his narrow glass, and the ladies do the same. "I will have only a little, if you don't mind," he says. She obliges, somehow without developing a bitter taste in her mouth or heavy feeling in her chest after doing so. He thanks her.

A "sure" slips out under her breath. The ladies seem to ignore her, acting as if their glasses magically fill with Riesling by themselves.

Walt cocks his head at an odd angle, smiles a little wider, and says, "Historia is near the entry to the dining room."

She squints her eyes at him and gives him a suspicious "thanks" and begins to saunter away. He slides all of the wine in his glass down his throat in one move. She looks back over her shoulder at him and notes how out of place he seems despite wearing just as fancy a suit as every other nobleman in the ballroom. Perhaps it is something in the way he carries himself or his demeanor or his eyes, Ymir thinks.

Surely enough, she spots Historia in the same place her brother said she would be. She starts to trot toward her out of excitement, but slows herself yards away. "Historia," she calls quietly. The girl turns to her. She does not look right. Her face is pale beneath her makeup, sweat shines between strands of her hair, her eyes seem spacey.

"Ymir," she chirps. She takes a couple small steps toward her, and Ymir closes the rest of the distance.

Ymir cocks an eyebrow. "What's up with you?"

"Would you come into the powder room with me?" she wheezes.

With hardly any hesitation, Ymir sets the bottle of wine on the nearest table and starts toward the bathroom across the ballroom. Historia struggles to keep stride. Furrowing her eyebrows, Ymir holds out a gloved hand, and Historia lays her gloved hand on top of it to help herself move. Ymir can feel the heat between the layers of fabric but tries her best to not think about it.

As they near the door, they come across another woman heading for the same place, but she realizes immediately who Historia is and how she looks and backs away to let the two of them go first. Ymir locks the door behind them once they are inside the restroom, and by now she has already figured out what the problem is.

Historia reaches both of her hands behind her back and gropes blindly for the binding that runs up the bodice. Ymir undoes it for her. The sleeves and front of the dress fall, revealing the camisole, which Ymir helps lift over Historia's head. And now the corset is exposed.

Ymir loses her breath for a second at Historia's bare shoulders, sweaty neck, pushed-up breasts, flawless skin.

"Terésa cinched it much too tight," she says weakly.

Ymir blinks hard to come back to the situation. "I'd say." She takes a moment to find the main knot before untying it and then pulling on the crosses to loosen the corset. When she gets it loose enough, Historia gasps, loudly, over and over. The color gradually returns to her face. Ymir stands behind her with the strings in her hands, gazing at the little movements Historia's vertebrae, shoulderblades and ribs make as she heaves for air. Her pale skin glistens with sweat.

She gulps, stands straight and angles her eyes at the ceiling. "You ready for me to lace it back up?" she asks.

Historia's breathing slows and softens over a few minutes. At last, she says, "Yes."

Ymir gives a small nod, grits her teeth, and begins to cinch the laces. She is amazed that she even knows how to do this.

"Thank you so much, Ymir," Historia says as Ymir works. "I am used to wearing corsets, but my usual assistant Rico has been working wait staff all day today."

"I don't understand the appeal of these things," Ymir groans.

Historia pauses a minute to think on this, glancing at the crown molding. "They do seem a bit ridiculous." She adds a chuckle. "But, it is the fashion."

"That's why I prefer men's clothing." She pulls on the last outer crossing laces and hooks her fingers inside the rabbit-ear loops at the smallest part of her waist. "'S this good?"

She takes a deep breath, holds it, and pushes it out of her mouth. "Yes, perfect."

Ymir is about to tie the loops together when she stops and spreads the bunched fabric beneath the laces. She struggles through a double-knotted bow.

Historia bends over stiffly to pick up the discarded camisole and slips it on over the corset, and then puts on the upper half of her gown by herself, lacing and all. Ymir stands back and watches.

"You all right?" she asks. Historia gives a nod and a hum. She turns around, looking as regal and put-together as she did before, sans suffocation. Clearing her throat, she cranes her neck and leans toward Ymir, who crouches a bit to make up for the height difference.

"What is the name of that bar you like to visit?" she whispers.

"Wings of Freedom?" Ymir raises her eyebrows.

"And when does it close?"

"Two a.m.," she answers.

Historia's voice goes even quieter. "Not too far from the train tracks, there is a tailor shop on a street corner. Would you meet me there on that corner at ten-thirty tonight? I would like to go out for a drink."

Ymir pulls away, her eyebrows now furrowed. She scans Historia for a moment.

"Sure," she says. Her shoulders jolt. "—But you're paying for yourself."

"Of course," Historia says, nodding and smirking. She exits the restroom first, and each walks her separate path across the ballroom floor.

**XIV.**

Hours later, after the dinner is done and people start to wonder when the dancing will begin, Ymir discovers the reason why Historia knows she wants to drink tonight. She discovers the reason for so, so many things.

A fork tings loudly against a wineglass and the conversations in the dining room cease all at once. The patriarchs of the Braun and Reiss families stand.

"We have invited all of you here this evening to make a special announcement," Ephraim says.

Simon, smiling just as widely as the other man is, adjusts his glasses, picks up his champagne flute and raises his arms. "Will you all please join us in a toast to the engagement of my daughter Historia to Ephraim's eldest son Reiner!"

At this the two of them stand, her hand on his and their grins obviously fake. Reiner angles his hand outward so as to show the crowd the giant diamond on Historia's brand new ring.

Ymir's jaw drops.

"To the engagement," the guests say in unison. The older men lead everyone in taking a sip of bubbly. They look toward their unwitting children, which cues their hollow laughs and bows to their audience. Applause ensues.

Simon faces the quartet that has until now been providing faint background noise for the night. He snaps his fingers at them. "How about a little dancing to end the night, eh?" he says as the music begins. The crowd approves and many start to get out of their chairs.

Reiner and Historia exchange rather painful-looking split-second glances, and then turn toward the people with grins so large their gums show. Both are red in the face and awkward as they make their way hand-in-hand to the dance floor and join the others. They hesitantly move their hands to the appropriate positions and begin a waltz, keeping some distance away from each other.

Some hot, thick feeling boils at the base of Ymir's throat as she watches them with squinted eyes. Does no one notice how uncomfortable they seem? she wants to scream, or proclaim, or something.

They keep toward the edge of the general dancing area, moving slowly and robotically like those brass androids made by the antisocial old mechanist who frequents Levi's bar. As the two of them rotate, Historia peeks over Reiner's shoulder, and Ymir swears her eyes directly meet hers.

**XV.**

Historia meets her at the planned time, underneath the gas lamp at the corner by the tailor near the railroad tracks, already in full Christa disguise. Ymir checks her pocket watch (the one she found abandoned and unattended on a bench just a couple weeks ago, the one with the crack across the diameter of the glass over the face), bites her lip and looks Christa in the face, and tells her she looks tired.

The hood over her head moves as she shakes it side to side. Ymir shrugs and the two of them head toward the tavern. She steals glances at Christa as they walk, noting the certainty in her gait and tenseness in her features.

She opens her mouth, inhales – and stops, the breath caught in her throat. She swings her arms wide to shake the air out of her and tries to speak again.

"So," she says – with a cough –, "You and Reiner Braun are getting married."

Historia bows her head. "I would rather not talk about it," she says.

Ymir frowns and angles her head toward the black sky, and all is forgotten. She stuffs her hands into her pockets one at a time.

They reach Wings of Freedom just as the train starts to roll into town. Historia stands right inside the door for a minute to take in the scene. She has never been to the place before – only walked past it. Now is about the time that the crowd will start to thin (it is Sunday night, after all, and average people have work tomorrow morning). The bar is dimly lit but immaculately kept, with fine liquors organized by type and year on the shelves at the back, and table edges parallel to the walls. A music player crackles in a corner. Three middle-aged men and a woman hunch over playing cards and piles of doubloons in one of the booths. Half the patrons ignore her when she enters, and most of the other half look away after a quick peek.

Ymir beckons her over with a tilt of the head and leads her to her usual stool at the bar. Christa hoists herself onto the one beside it.

"Brought a friend tonight, eh?" Levi says. He appears like a shadow before them on the other side of the counter.

"Sure," Ymir says.

She pauses to contemplate what she wants – but Christa speaks up right away. "Gin tonic for me, please."

Ymir frowns wide-eyed at her, looks at Levi, back at her, back at Levi. "I'll, uh, have the same."

Levi nods and looks to the other bartender – the new help he hired recently, some part-Turkish twerp who spends many a shift prattling with his blond buddy. "Eren," Levi calls. He pads toward the boy. "Two GTs."

Ymir takes her eyes from Levi to Christa. She lays an elbow on the counter and rests her jaw in her hand. Christa sits with her legs crossed under her dress and cloak and her hands clenched around the edge of the stool as she reads the labels of the spirits on the shelves.

"Why don't you take off your hood and stay a while?" Ymir teases. Christa snaps her attention toward Ymir and has to glare at her a second or two before processing the words. Without a word, she eases the hood of her cloak off her head and then runs her fingers through her wig to smooth it. Ymir studies the charcoal coating on her fair-colored eyebrows and the fake beauty mark on her cheekbone.

Christa throws glances over her shoulders at the people sitting at the tables. "How did you find this place?" she asks quietly.

"Heard my landlord talking about it," Ymir says.

Her eyes trace the line separating wall from ceiling. "It certainly is cleaner in here than I imagined." She lowers her head and mumbles, "I wonder if my brother seeks out places like this on his travels."

"What, did you think I drink in some sorta hovel?" Ymir asks indignantly, and Christa just gives her a look.

Levi sets their drinks in front of them and disappears. Ymir swipes up her glass and leans it just slightly toward Christa. "Cheers," she says. Christa touches the rim of her glass to Ymir's. Ymir takes a sip, concentrates on the burn of the alcohol as it goes down her throat, and places it on the counter. She looks over at Christa, who is still drinking – she tilts the glass a little further upward with every few swallows. The amount of liquid shrinks and shrinks until only a filmlike layer of it remains at the bottom of the glass, the lime wedge an island in the center. She takes the glass from her lips, gasps quietly, and lays it down.

"Damn," Ymir says under her breath. Christa wipes her wrist over her mouth.

"What?" Christa says, smiling.

"That was impressive," Ymir says.

Christa laughs a little. "Thanks."

Historia does not drink often. (At least, as far as Ymir knows.) In fact, other than a few polite sips of wine here and there at social gatherings, she has not seen the Reisses drink at all.

In contrast, going through a whole day sober is a rarity for Ymir. There are worse vices, she knows – from experience—, and it's not like she denies her dependence, but she figures her liver can hold out until life gets a little better and she can afford to get buzzed a little less.

Not even five minutes pass before Christa's state changes drastically. Her ears and eyes and nose turn red, and her speaking is loud and inarticulate, and her movements are grand, and her laughs are frequent.

"Y'know, Ymir," she starts.

"What?" Ymir tries to stifle a smile. She drags her fingertips along part of the rim of her glass, which is still mostly full.

Christa grabs the edge of the counter and leans far backward, her hair falling behind her head. Her mouth opens but no words come out. She just stares grinning at her.

"What?" Ymir asks again, and Christa only laughs. She brings her torso forward.

"Nothing."

"You are such a lightweight." Ymir laughs, shoulders shaking, eyes narrowing. Christa's jaw drops open.

"You laughed!" she announces. She kicks her legs back and forth rapidly and points both of her dainty index fingers in Ymir's direction. "You actuallylaughed! I have never heard you laugh before!" She slams her hands on the counter. "I mean, I've heard you go 'heh-heh-heh' like you were about to commit a crime or something" – Ymir chuckles at this – "but I have never heard you laugh, and you just laughed!"

Heat flourishes across Ymir's face. She bites her lip and places her fingers around her glass but does not pick it up. "Yes, I laugh," she mutters. "I have the capacity."

Christa sighs and brings her gaze to her empty glass, her grin no smaller. "The world is magical," she sighs. Ymir chuckles. She looks into her glass too, at the way the liquid bends the light and the veins in the lime. She nudges the glass away.

A bearded man sitting close by leans forward and squints at them. "Hey," he calls to grab their attention. They turn toward him. "Aren't you Christa? From The Oasis?"

"I am indeed Christa from The Oasis," she replies. Ymir scowls.

As if the news has just been broadcast throughout the planet, every nearby pair of eyes shoots to her. "Christa?" "That burlesque dancer?"

One twig of a man stands, lifting his mug of lager into the air. "Put on a show for us!" he demands. This alone receives approval from the masses.

The tiniest of giggles leaks out of her throat as she faces all of them. She lifts her arms and the cloak cloth drapes from them. "Alright," she says, and the crowd whoops and cheers, and Ymir tries to gulp down the sinking feeling in her chest.

Christa slides off the stool and pads over to the closest open floorspace. By this time the entire bar has quieted in wait. She stops, stands on her toes, and points toward the music machine. "Would anyone mind putting on a song for me?" she asks.

At this three men jump out of their seats and to the machine, doubloons in hand. The one who makes it first shoves in his coin. He starts to turn the dial but then freezes and looks at her over his shoulder and asks what she wants.

"Anything's fine, thank you," she says with a wave. In a minute a tinny polka tune starts to pour off the disc.

She inhales through the nose, extends her arms for balance and then begins. Her feet move to the beat, her whole body swaying. The instant the first crescendo hits, she whips off her cloak and drops it to the ground, and though her dress is just as modest as any other woman's in the tavern, all the men whistle for her. Her movement grows more exaggerated. She shakes her hips and shoulders, kicks out her legs, spins. No one notices the song ending until many seconds later when she moves a little slower, and the card players shout, "Put on another! Another!" Some folksy foreign song floats out of the machine, starting her moving again as if she is a wind-up toy and sound is a giant hand.

Ymir takes her eyes off Christa and glances at Levi, who watches her from his place behind the bar with his arms crossed over his chest and a bored look on his face. Eren at the other end of the counter seems entirely engrossed.

Levi notices Ymir and shifts his eyes in her direction. "This crowd is something," he comments. "You should bring her more often."

Ymir drags her gaze back to Christa, blowing air out of her mouth.

The next song that comes on has Christa gasping. "Oh, I love this!" she declares. She smacks her palms against her cheeks, and a few people laugh.

She gives a few lazy twirls on her toes, with high kicks between them, but has to take half a minute to stand still and let the dizziness stop. She then saunters to the nearest empty table, pulls out one of the chairs and starts to clamber onto the top. Once the people realize what she is about to do, many whistle and cheer.

"No shoes on my tables," Levi barks. Christa looks over her shoulder at him, lowers her leg, and keeps her eyes like daggers on him as she takes off her shoes one at a time and throws them partway across the room.

She mounts herself onto the table and continues her dance routine. She starts with fluid, elegant movements, those of the ballerina she was trained to be, but as the song goes on and another begins, her movements become rougher, more risqué, less concentrated. She rocks her hips, arches her back.

Ymir almost chuckles at her dancing, maybe to keep back the sharp heat in her throat or maybe to be as fun as the crowd that has started to toss doubloons at Christa's feet. She glances off to the side and sees a lanky man crouched over the shoes. She glowers at him and calls, "Hey," in a low warning voice.

He looks up at her through thick, curly bangs and his eyes widen. "Those ain't yours," she scolds. She glares at him until he slinks away empty-handed back to his table.

At this she slides off her seat, grabs both of the shoes, and sets them on the floor behind the stool, hopefully before anyone else sees them. Despite herself she takes a moment to compare them with hers: Christa's shoes are the same delicate, high-heeled, decorated slippers Historia Reiss wears, while Ymir's are the same coarse leather boots she wears to work in the hay and mud and manure. Ymir's feet must be so much larger than Christa's.

"Ymir!" She straightens her back and turns toward Christa, who is beckoning her over with a wave. "Dance with me!" She scans the room to find several more pairs of eyes on her.

"You're spouting nonsense," she says, but Christa urges, "Come on!" She bends and straightens each of her fingers individually.

Ymir pauses to regard her, during which time the crowd eggs her on, and eventually rolls her eyes and pulls her own shoes off her feet.

"I really can't dance," she disclaims as she approaches her. She is struck, for a second, by how odd it feels to look up rather than down at Christa.

Christa leans far forward – she appears to almost lose her balance in doing so – to clap her hands onto Ymir's upper arms. "You can. You just don't," she whispers. She grins widely, and at this she drags Ymir closer. Ymir stomps a foot onto the seat of one of the chairs and heaves herself onto the tabletop. There is hardly enough space on this table for the two of them to stand together. People start screaming, clapping. Another song comes on the machine.

"Alright," Christa slurs. She studies her skirt a moment and then faces the thickest part of the crowd. She cocks her hips, presses her knuckles to the curve of her waist, and positions one leg out to the side. "Copy me."

Hesitantly, Ymir eases her hands onto her hips and sticks out a leg. She keeps her eyes on Christa's body. Christa shifts her weight to the opposite leg, swinging her hips and grunting once. Ymir shakes her head but still mimics the movement. Christa lifts her arms over her head, Ymir lifts her arms over her head. Christa kicks out her leg and crosses it over the other, Ymir flings her leg out in front of her and stands normally. The women graze one another in moving, and Ymir blushes a little. Christa's whole body shakes starting at the shoulders. Men whistle. Ymir just chuckles.

"See? You're not bad." Christa gives Ymir a sweet smile. She drops her arms and it causes her body to fall backward. Ymir lurches in her direction, stopping her fall with an arm around her waist. She holds Christa like this, the girl leaning into the arm behind her. She whips back her head and laughs wildly at the ceiling.

Ymir scowls. "Damn, you're heavy," she mutters. Christa's laugh ends, and snaps her head into place and gazes straight into Ymir's soul for a few seconds and then suddenly hiccups and goes limp. All her weight presses on Ymir's arm. Ymir spreads her legs shoulder-width to anchor herself and uses her other arm to hold her. Once she's sure Christa won't fall, she glances about the room and announces, "I think she's done."

Some express disappointment, a few others worry. Ymir moves one part at a time – lowers one foot onto a chair, pulls the unconscious Christa toward her, situates one arm across the small of her back and the other behind her knees, lowers the other foot, gets to the floor, lifts her body with a grunt and a swear, and starts to carry her toward the bar.

"Eren," Levi orders, "Let them into the back room." He takes a ring full of brass keys out of his apron pocket and throws it to his assistant, who catches it and replies with a quiet "yes, sir" and scrambles to unlock a door Ymir has never noticed until now.

Ymir brings Christa into the tiny room, which has walls totally covered with bottles of alcohol and just enough floor space for her to set down Christa and sit herself. Eren leaves the door partially open so that they have some light but stands guard outside it.

She looks around, turns and asks Eren for cold water. He hands her a glassful. Without missing a beat Ymir dumps the whole thing on Christa's face, and Christa squirms and sputters and opens her eyes. She holds her wrist to her mouth to cover her coughs. When she catches her breath, she sits up and bends her knees, and presses the ball of her palm to her temple. She scans the shelves in front of her.

"Where is everyone?" she breathes.

Ymir releases the breath she did not realize she was holding. She sets the empty glass on the ground beside her. "Amazing," she says. "You're like this after just one GT. You really are a lightweight."

Christa moans and brings her knees closer to her chest. A watery black line trails down from the fake beauty mark on her cheek, the top of her dress grows dark in wet spots, and her wig is flattened and shiny.

"Alright," Ymir says with a sigh as she rises to her feet, "We should get you back home." Christa groans once but does not offer any other resistance.

Ymir snakes out of the room and past Eren, and makes her way to her barstool, where both pairs of shoes still remain. The music has stopped playing now, and for the most part the patrons have returned to their normal business.

She sits down to put on her boots. She feels Levi's presence and sits up and sees him standing on the other side of the counter, watching her. At first she starts to dig through her pocket for some doubloons to pay for the drinks, but when she sets them on the counter she notices the expression on his face and tells him quietly that everything is okay. He nods, picks up the money, and shuffles away.

Sighing, she picks up Christa's slippers and cloak off the floor, takes them into the back room, and waits for Christa to fumble them on. She stands up so that they can leave, but immediately has to sit back down and put her shoes on the correct feet.

On their way out of the backroom, Ymir grabs another doubloon and drops it into Eren's hand. He grins, tosses it in the air, catches it. Then he pockets the coin and locks the door behind them. She makes a mental note to ask Christa for reimbursement later. Christa stops in the doorway as they leave, to wave a slurred goodbye to the crowd, which bids her goodnight in return. Ymir drags her out the door. They start down the sidewalk on their route back to the Reiss estate halfway across town, Ymir glancing at Christa every few seconds to make sure she doesn't collapse again.

**XVI.**

A lone, curious rat scurries out of an alley as they pass. Ymir merely glares at it and it retreats. (If Wynonna Townshend Reiss can have a panic attack at the sight of a little field mouse unburying itself from a pile of hay in the stable, then Ymir does not want to know the kind of reaction Historia may have. Though, granted, it would probably not be as dramatic. At least, if Ymir laughs this time, Historia would not yell out a shrill threat to have her fired.)

"I still feel like dancing," Christa babbles. She takes a few irregular steps forward, flinging her arms out to her sides. She nearly trips over her heel but catches herself. Ymir mutters, "I see that."

"Does—" she hiccups "—does Levi ever defecate? He has the look on his face like he – he never does."

A strong, loud laugh rumbles from Ymir's stomach, and she tries her level best to keep it contained. "I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't," is all she manages to get out.

"Do you know who else never defecates? My brother. I do not think he even lays with his wife, or breathes, or blinks."

Ymir pictures Adair – his hair impeccably combed back, his thin-framed eyeglasses dangling from a gold chain around his neck, his taut lips, his monochromatic wardrobe, his squared gait. She chuckles a bit. The sound dies out and she stays silent a long time, keeping in stride without looking.

Out of nowhere she hears a loud sniffle, and she peers to her side and sees Christa's head bowed and all at once starts to hear tiny gasps and squeaks. She stops, and Christa stops as well and balls her hands into fists under her cloak and sniffles violently. When she brings her head up, Ymir can see the tears.

"I don't want to marry Reiner," she says. "I do not."

"You don't feel anything toward him, do you?" Ymir crosses her arms over her chest as she watches the tear flow intensify.

Christa shakes her head.

"Then just don't marry him."

"That is not a choice I have," she says.

Ymir frowns. "What do you mean, it's not your choice? You're motherfucking Historia Reiss."

Christa blinks many times and inhales sharply. "I do not have anything against Reiner. He is a nice person and would make a good husband, and I respect him. I consider him a friend, even." She wipes the start of another tear away with her index finger.

"Don't tell me you're marrying him just to be nice," Ymir sneers, tilting her head far to the side.

"I am not," Christa retorts. She grits her teeth. "You don't understand."

"What don't I understand? Seems everything here is pretty fucking simple, to me." Ymir shifts her weight from one foot to another, sliding her hips to the other side.

Christa tears her head away, her whole body following in a turn. She blinks hard into the night sky.

"Well, it is not simple," she says, and she tries to fight the shakiness in her voice.

She turns toward Ymir again. Beneath her tears she breaks into a desperate smile. "You know, when it came time for Adair to marry, he got to choose his wife," she says. "And he even got to court her for more than a year. Reiner and I met only – only six or seven times before tonight. Our parents were the ones to tell us just two days ago that we were betrothed. I barely know the man, and he barely knows me. We did not get to choose each other. We did not even know we were supposed to be courting. And now, look." She sticks her left arm out from inside her cloak and shoves her hand in Ymir's face. The giant diamond on her ring catches the light from the gaslamp.

Ymir blinks at the ring, pulls her head back a bit and says, "That's shitty." Historia lowers her hand.

"No one ever said marriage had to be about love, though," Ymir says. "That's why so many married couples have unofficial relationships on the side. You could do that."

"Oh, I know. Reiner already has one." Her eyes widen and lips press together. "I probably should not say that to others," she mumbles. She shakes her head. "Regardless, my plan is still to run away."

"Isn't that awfully selfish of you?" Ymir teases.

Christa grits her teeth. "Well, what would you expect me to do?"

"I don't know," Ymir says, "Something more Reiss-like."

She throws back her head, laughing. "Reiss-like is funding libraries and sitting pretty on a horse."

Ymir smirks. "Just saying that is un-Reiss-like of you," she says, and Christa laughs more.

She slings an arm around Christa's shoulders and starts them walking in the right direction again. Christa leans her head against Ymir and clumsily matches her steps along the cobblestone path. Ymir can feel the heat behind layers of cloth and skin and nearly sense her rabbit heartbeat. Her fingers tingle with the desire for silky hair between them. When she closes her eyes she sees flecks of charcoal on eyelids, half-unlaced corsets, skimpy costumes next to bare skin. Such a great, heavy wave rises from her chest that she has to stop her legs just to hold it back. She shuts her eyes and drops her arm from Christa's shoulder, but the warmth still lingers. For a moment she feels like throwing up – like she's had too much to drink and wants to cleanse herself from the binge because she's dying, but she'll only feel worse when it's done because it's all still there and she can't stop.

"Are you all right?" Christa asks. She has brought her face so close to Ymir's that Ymir can overwhelmingly feel and smell the alcohol on her breath.

"It's nothing," she quips without thinking.

She opens her eyes and forces herself to frown, and swings her hand around to smack Christa on her upper back. "You're so wasted," she grumbles, and she takes her hand away and starts to lead Christa down the sidewalk again. She tries to swallow down the hard lump in her throat, but it gets stuck at the base of it, and she swears she cannot breathe.

**XVII.**

"You are leaving already?"

"Yes, dear mother, I am." Walt whips the tether one last time around the hook on the side of the plane, ties it tight, and descends the steps backwards to the ground.

"Where will you go this time?" Historia asks. She takes a step toward him.

"I would like to visit India next. I had not been able to include that area in my last trip and I have heard great things about the place."

"I do wish you would stay with us longer," Magdalena pleads.

"I do as well," Walt says, lying quite believably, "But I fear the travel-bug has bitten me once again. I have outlasted my welcome here. I feel restless."

He takes a moment to regard each of his family's faces. There is vitality in Historia's bright blue eyes – something he likes. In the rest, he marvels at their staunchness and homogeneity, and wonders how he could have come from such a line.

He sweeps his arms open and smiles. "Well, I apologize for the short notice, but I want to take flight while the weather is fair."

They remain where they are for a moment and then begin to shuffle toward him, as if hesitating will delay him and perhaps cause him to stay. He hugs his father and wishes him luck, hugs and kisses his mother with the mutual promise to take care, half-hugs his brother and pats him on the back and tells him to have a little fun, hugs his brother's wife and tells her to make sure of it. He bids adieu to his sister last, embracing her and kissing her on the cheeks and forehead.

"Please come back to us safely," she says.

He lays his chin against the top of her hairline and keeps his hands around her waist an extra minute. "I will." At length he pulls away. "Be brave, Historia."

And he starts the engine, crawls into the cockpit, lifts the set of stairs into the cargo hatch, dons his hat and goggles, and lifts off. The women wave kerchiefs at him. The men watch him disappear with their hands in their pockets.

Magdalena sighs. "He is such a child, still." She stuffs her kerchief back into her sleeve.

Historia turns to her mother and swallows a frown. "He only wants to better himself through worldly experience," she says.

"Even if he does, he will have to face his responsibilities sooner or later," Adair asserts, and everyone looks at him. "He is only delaying the inevitable. He has to accept it eventually."

"Accept what?" Historia asks as if offended.

Adair narrows his eyes a bit. "His role as a Reiss." At this Historia does frown.

"Well," Simon says, clearing his throat, "I suppose it is best that he gets all this out of his system now before we are forced to rely on him."

With his word, the conversation ends, and he turns on his heels toward the mansion, a silent signal for everyone to follow. Historia takes one last glance into the sky before retreating into the house with the others.

**XVIII.**

The only other staff member on the bench is some guy she has never seen before. He sits with his shoulders hunched and his hands between his wobbly knees, and every once in a while he flushes and sweats in a sudden wave of self-consciousness.

He and Ymir sit through the staff meeting hardly acknowledging each other, but the lack of attention does not last long. Social butterflies Connie and Sasha stake out the new face right away and make their way toward him as soon as they are dismissed.

"Whoa, Ymir," is the first thing Connie says. "Is this guy your cousin or something?"

For the first time Ymir looks at him. It really is not that much of a stretch to think they could be related. Both Ymir and the guy have strikingly darker skin tones compared to those of the ivory-white Reisses or sandy-white Brauns; tall and wiry frames, long limbs, and dark hair. If only their faces were more similar, then maybe they could pass for kin.

"Naw," Ymir snorts. Connie laughs.

Sasha sticks out a hand. "How d'you do? I'm Sasha Braus."

The young man regards her hand for a few seconds before realizing what to do with it. He falters a bit in sliding his hand out from between his legs and timidly wraps his fingers around her palm, and says all at once, "I'm Bertholdt – uh, Fubar."

"Nice to meech'yer," Sasha says in her warm cockney accent. Their hands separate. He shrinks away from the semicircle of strangers in front of him, but no one pays mind to it. She points with her thumb to the man beside her, the men behind her, and the woman on the bench with Bertholdt, telling him all their names. Connie, Jean and Marco, Ymir.

"I didn't know the Reisses were hiring new help," Jean says.

Bertholdt opens his mouth and stammers before replying: "I'm actually from the Braun estate. I'm Mister Reiner's personal valet. Lord and Lady Braun figured I should come here along with him."

In a rare move, the Reisses and Brauns arranged for Reiner to stay at their mansion for a few months while the Brauns "sort out things internally", whatever that means. It makes sense, in a way. Historia and Reiner could get better acquainted during their first while as fiancés. Though, obviously, they are not allowed to share a bedroom yet.

Ymir blinks at him. The gears start to crank in her head.

"Cool," Connie says, nodding.

"We ought to give you a tour of the property or something, so you can get to know your way around here," Marco suggests.

Ymir immediately raises a hand and shifts in her seat. "I'll do it." She gives Bertholdt a pointed look, and his eyes widen in some kind of panic in return.

The other staff members take a moment to react in a way aside from raising eyebrows and exchanging glances.

"That's actually nice of you," Jean says. He crosses his arms over his chest.

Ymir half-shrugs. She looks at Bertholdt again, and he leans his body away from her as politely as he can.

**XIX.**

She spends a good hour droning about the locations on the property, the way the staff system generally works, how to distinguish each member of the Reiss family and all the bourgeois business types who live on the property with them.

"You can tell a person's a Reiss if they are short, have blond hair and blue eyes, and always dress all fancy, and they all really fucking love horses for some reason. That's how I know them all, you know, because I work in the stables. Simon is the old coot with high-necked sweaters and shoes so shiny you can see your reflection. Magdalena is his wife, and she's wide in the hips and has real deep laugh lines and a nasally voice. She's actually taller than he is by a couple inches. Walt is the oldest child, and he's the only Reiss with facial hair, and he flies a plane – he's actually not home often, but you'll know when he is. You'll recognize him. Adair is the middle child. You'll recognize him, too: his lip twitches about every minute or so and he just has this look about him like there's a stick shoved so far up his ass that if you pushed it in any further it would impale his brain." She gets a chuckle out of him at this. "His wife's name is Wynonna. She wears glasses just like he does, and she moves very slowly and always makes this face." She squints her eyes, lifts her chin high, purses her lips, and gazes with contempt at the blades of grass at her feet. He chuckles again. "Then there's Historia, the Reiss' daughter. And that's about it."

Bertholdt nods in consideration. He looks briefly at Ymir and then redirects his eyes ahead of them, toward the ivy covering the fence. She lets the silence sit. She listens a minute to the sounds of soles moving over grass, glances at his profile, smirks, and elbows him in the side, and he jumps and winces. "You're quiet, huh?" she says.

"I'm sorry," he says, his hazel eyes wide and nervous. "I just don't have anything to add." His voice shrinks with each word.

Ymir hums, straightens her lips, sighs quietly and faces forward again. She can feel the man sweating and trembling next to her – wonders what could be making him so nervous. He sets his jaw back and forth, teeth gnashing on the inside of his bottom lip.

"Ymir?" he stammers.

"What?"

He gulps hard and blinks several times, and then asks, "Could you tell me more about Historia Reiss?"

She grits her teeth behind a frown, her shoulders tensing, her throat constricting. "What do you want to know?" she replies, her tone suddenly sharp and defensive.

"I just am wondering," he says. "—You know, since she and Mister Reiner are engaged to be married. I just want to know what kind of lady my master is marrying. That's all."

At this she turns to look at him, examining the light caught in the sweat patches on his forehead, nose, cheekbones. His fingers drum on the side of his thigh.

She could tell him Historia holds her horse's mane in a fist as she rides it, has nasty ballerina feet, can't hold her liquor, and is able to melt hearts with a simple bat of her eyelashes. She could tell him Historia can sing like an angel in fluent German, and recite the most vulgar version of "The Night of the King's Castration" from memory. She could tell him how electric it feels to touch Historia's flawless skin.

Her face feels hot at the thoughts. She only crosses her arms over her chest, and says, "Well, she's fucking perfect."

**XX.**

The Oasis' business has skyrocketed in the last few months. No one knows the reason why, but no one is complaining. Christa could not be happier, dancing on the stage in front of a crowd of over a hundred. Ymir makes an effort to get to the place early after work so she can have her preferred seat. She keeps the tradition of giving Christa carnations at the end of every week. To make up for practicing routines with the other performers during the daytime, she has been disciplined in her nearly daily private dance lessons, using sheets of choreography that Hanji gives her each night before she leaves with Ymir.

She has cooperated – beyond cooperated, even, so far in her secret-keeping. They have skated out of a few close calls thanks to her vigilance.

- Magdalena or Wynonna wants to have a late-night chat? Sorry, having feminine issues and the pain is debilitating.  
- Maid finds the mysterious carnations? Reiner picked them.  
- Christa pulls a muscle from flubbing a rare move during her act? Fell off Vega.  
- Some of the staff talking about going to The Oasis after work? Naw, that place isn't nearly as great as people say – stay away.

Ymir and Historia are starting to get very good at this.

Life in proximity to nobles is decidedly more interesting with the knowledge that most everyone has a dirty little (or big) secret. She has yet to be enlightened on the details of Historia's life-escape plan, but she has faith in the girl nonetheless.

Yes, things are going quite well until Jean comes to Historia after a horse ride and tells her that her family is waiting to tell her some news in the parlor.

**Notes: **

***At first Historia had not convinced Keith to give Ymir more money, but he relented at the last minute, giving Ymir a hefty bonus in lieu of a permanent pay raise. Then Historia followed up. Ymir accepted the money both times without saying anything because she's kind of a greedy shit.

***Jean holds a position halfway between being Simon's errand boy and being his personal assistant: he gets to run around performing odd jobs and issuing summons all day on Simon's behalf, and helps him out with a few other things too. Marco is the head landscaper. Sasha is a cook. Connie is a housekeeper.


	3. xxi-xxx

**more notes at the end (ノ^_^)ノ**

**XXI.**

Nearly the whole town shows for the vigil. They mourn the loss more dramatically than anyone expected, as if the man touched their very souls in life. The tragedy is so profound that two separate funerals have to take place: one in the town square and one at a cathedral. All staff, extended family and multigenerational friends are allowed to attend Walter Reiss' "burial", if one can venture to call it that – merely an empty casket being stowed in the Reiss mausoleum.

The Brauns and the Townshends are here but largely ignorable, and Simon is an only child, but Magdalena is the middle of three children, so with all this, Reiss family gatherings could be more accurately named Smith family gatherings. Her older brother Erwin, younger sister Daisy and brother-in-law Moritz are practically the only sources of life at the wake.

Adair does not bother to make the rounds. He seats himself on the chaise lounge next to his father in the armchair, clears his throat, and uses a handkerchief to clean his glasses.

"Seeing your mother with her brother and sister reminds me of how free-spirited and hot-blooded she always was," Simon says forlornly.

Adair chuckles a bit, slipping his glasses onto his face. "Yes, it seems Walter and Historia inherited their attitudes from Mother's side of the family." He looks pointedly at Historia, who stands by the fireplace a number of yards away, and she glances in his direction. "That makes sense, though. They both favor Smith genes in appearance." Historia frowns at him through her black veil. Simon gives him a look too.

Magdalena leaves her sister and nephew and scans the room for a minute before she finds her husband and comes to him.

"It is so charming how Erwin and Daisy still call me Maggie even though we are grown adults now." She smiles and turns to Simon. "Remember when we were first married and you called me Maggie, too?"

His head does not move, but his eyes find Daisy and Moritz sitting together a little further away. Moritz has his hand on Daisy's back and the two of them whisper to each other and laugh. "I do remember," he says. God, does he remember. He loved her then, loved her like a run down a mason street in a rainstorm, loved her like a burning red sunset off a cliff.

Historia turns away from the mantle, looks around the room, and, sighing quietly, finds the empty chair next to her cousin Armin, Daisy and Moritz' only child.

She seats herself, bends at the waist, hangs her head low over her legs and holds the brim of her hat in her hands. The mesh of the veil grates on her forehead. Her elbows dig into her thighs. Her throat feels tight, her head numb. Her body trembles.

"I saw you dancing the other night," Armin says, and Historia gasps and lifts her head and turns toward him with wide eyes, "At Wings of Freedom. You wore a wig. Everyone called you Christa."

Historia stares at him a moment, silent in fear and confusion. "You – you were at Wings of Freedom?" Instability builds in her voice.

He nods. "The new bartender, Eren, is a close friend of mine. He is my neighbor, actually. I was visiting him at work the other night." The two of them keep their blue eyes locked on one another, the tenseness palpable between them.

"His sister Mikasa dances at The Oasis, too. Do you know her?" he asks.

"I do," she says, and she visibly shrinks from him.

His head perks up and voice lightens. "Don't worry – I will not tell anybody."

All at once the breath she's been holding pours out of her, her muscles relax and her eyes soften. "Thank you," she mouths.

"Why do you work at The Oasis?" he asks.

She cocks her head. "I have my reasons." She reaches a hand behind her to scratch the back of her scalp through her hair.

"I see," he says. He cracks a conscious smile.

He sees her biting her quivering lip, and leans back, propping an ankle on the opposite knee. He glances at the close-by fireplace and scratches the crook behind his ear.

She nods a little without facing him. Then she rises to her feet, smoothes her dress, and bows her head. "Excuse me," she breathes. She sweeps herself toward the door – but her family spots her, and her mother beckons her toward them. She stops. Her shoulders tense, her eyes close, and she takes a deep breath.

She steps toward them lightly, her expression sunken. "Why do you not mourn?" she asks.

Adair blinks hard. "Whatever do you mean, dear sister?"

"Everyone is gathered here to grieve for the loss of Walt, but I see no one grieving." She scans a section of the room over her shoulder. "All I see here is another excuse to make conversation."

"Well, yes, but I doubt that he would want everyone to merely mope about in all black, if he were still here," Adair says.

Simon grimaces. "Adair is right," he says. "Walter would not want us to mourn his death, but rather to celebrate his life."

"But we are not even doing that," she argues.

Magdalena tilts her head and adjusts her hat. "Historia," she says soothingly, "Everyone here has just sat through a funeral service and witnessed a burial. We have felt a large amount of sadness already today. I think we are all simply relaxing at this point. The best thing we can do is to take our minds off this tragedy and move on." She reaches for Historia's hand, cupping it in hers.

Mouth open, Historia blinks back tears at her mother. A tremor races up her spine.

"You are his mother," she says. "How could you say such a thing?" Her brimming eyes widen at her brother and father. "How could any of you…?" Her voice is high and breaking. She stands tense there, breaths heavy and eyebrows grinding downward.

She tries to pull away but Magdalena's grasp tightens, and her mother leans forward and angles her head up at her. "Historia—"

"Do not speak to me," she barks. She shakes her head vigorously from side to side. Her mother freezes.

She scans over each of their faces again and again, searching for some indication that they have been touched in the heart. All she can make of their eyes, just as blue as hers, is an opaque mindlessness – a solid, inhuman sort of look that makes her stomach churn as if she wants to vomit. She turns and tears away from them as fast as she can.

They stare blankly at her as she disappears through a pair of French doors. They are frozen and heavy and numb, uncomprehending, her fair-colored family.

Reiner, having seen the whole thing from the other end of the room, frowns a bit, and chooses to break out of the small circle of acquaintances in which he stands, jogging after her.

He finds her pacing at the end of a corridor. Her face is red-tinged and contorted to hold back tears. She turns toward him but keeps her head down as he stops in front of her. "Are you all right?" he says, his voice high and smooth.

"No," she whimpers. Her head jerks from one side to the other. "No, I am not all right."

She sniffles deeply, holding up her head and straightening her back, turns on her heels and starts in the other direction – but cannot take more than one step. She freezes in position. He sees her chest expanding and expanding under the tight bodice of her black dress.

He shuffles toward her and wraps his arms around her torso from behind, pressing his chest to her back, and she loses every ounce of control she's attempted to maintain. She lets out a screaming wail that the tall ceiling throws straight back at them like the terrible shriek of an angel's weep. Her shoulders, her entire upper body shake with sobs. Her neck goes weak and her head drops low. Reiner takes one of her upper arms in his opposite hand and half-spins her to face him. She immediately buries her face in his lapel. His large, bulky hands lie on her lithe back, and her tiny, dainty hands try to go around his barrel chest but instead tug on his jacket for dear life as her whole physical being melts into the overcoming sobs.

His thumb rubs back and forth a bit on the fabric of her dress, but stops after a minute. The sounds she makes stab him in the heart all at once. He squints his eyes shut and just holds her close to him.

Minutes – forever passes. He makes out the echo of shoe soles on the wood floor. He forces open his eyes and peers at the approaching person.

"Yo," Ymir whispers. She is a few yards away, but keeps the distance, hands easing out of the pockets of her cheap pantsuit. "What's going on?"

Reiner grits his teeth and keeps his eyes totally focused on her as he shakes his head.

Her eyes stay on him until she figures out what he means, and then move from him to the tiny girl in his arms. She listens for a moment to the rawness of her wails. Consciously she denies it, but the corners of her lips fall at the sound.

Historia's shoulderblades poke outward when she squeaks and the sobs instantly stop. She releases a shaky sigh.

"Hey," Ymir says. She starts toward the girl. Reiner's grip slackens just the slightest.

Historia snorts loudly. Ymir, only a couple feet from her, leans down and snaps her fingers close to Historia's ear. "I said, 'hey.'"

She peels her face off his jacket, sniffles at the fresh air, and turns her head a few degrees toward Ymir, eyes red-rimmed and bleary.

"What are you crying for?" Ymir asks. "Are you crying for your dead brother?"

At once Historia responds with an almost silent "uh-huh."

Ymir purses her lips as she shakes her head side to side once. "No you're not."

It takes a few seconds for Historia to decode the words, but when she does she turns her whole self toward Ymir and musters a frown. Her arms fall from Reiner's sides, and he slips his hands off her and backs away a few steps.

"Walt is dead," Ymir declares. She has to wait a minute or two for Historia to suddenly start sobbing again and ease to a stop. "He's dead. He doesn't feel any pain. There is nothing your tears can do for him now – nothing you can do will do anything for him now."

She brings a hand toward Historia and smacks it onto her shoulder. "And you know that. You're not crying for him. You're crying for yourself."

"N-no I'm not," Historia blubbers.

"You're crying for all those gifts you'll never get from other cultures. You're crying because you'll never get to ride in a plane like that again. You're crying because you don't have anyone to share those inside jokes with anymore, because instead of waiting for him to come home you have nothing to look forward to now, because you think that you've been hurt by him being gone."

"No," Historia demands faintly.

Ymir shakes her head and brings her face within inches of Historia's. Her grip on her shoulder tightens, and her voice grows deeper and harder. "You are crying because you are angry and envious and lonely."

"No."

"You are not crying for Walt. Fuck Walt. It's all about you and how you feel – that's why you're having a reaction at all."

"Shut your head!" Historia screams. She slashes a hand through the air and jumps at Ymir, who backs away just a split second before. "It is not like that!"

She takes in a sharp gasp, and waves her arms wildly as she yells. "I'm crying because I miss him! Because he meant something to me and I loved him so much and now he's never going anywhere again and he's never coming home! And I actually care about him! And this is what people do when they lose someone they care about – they cry!" She points to the tears cascading out of her eyes. Ymir raises her eyebrows.

"But I guess you wouldn't know that, Ymir, because you are such an asshole, all you ever think about is yourself," she accuses.

She yipes and clenches a fist, but pivots away, craning her head in another direction and forcing her fingers open. "God, I am so jealous." Her voice fails in the last sounds, breaking into sobs once again. She pushes the knuckles of her palms to her eyelids.

Ymir points a finger to her own chest. "You, Miss Princess, jealous of me?" she scoffs.

At this Reiner comes forward and lays a hand on Historia's back. "Ymir, that's enough," he says, his voice low. "I don't think she is in the right mental state to understand the message you're trying to send right now."

Ymir eases a fist onto her hip and stands and watches as Historia falls into a trembling mass of incoherent gasps and howls and blubbers in Reiner's arms. He sets his chin on top of her head and rocks her gently. All the while he keeps his eyes sharp on Ymir as if to push her away by simply glaring.

Finally she drops her arm, turns on her heels and walks back to the parlor, muttering, "Whatever."

**XXII.**

Perhaps in high hopes, Ymir still visits The Oasis every night. Christa isn't in any of the shows. After about a week and a half she gives up and drinks the entire evening away at Wings of Freedom like she used to.

She has spotted Historia a few times since the funeral – she knows she hasn't disappeared yet. She wonders if Historia even has it in her to break her promise and leave on her own. Still, it is as if their association with each other has regressed to nothing more than vague acknowledgement through a thick, invisible wall.

**XXIII.**

Something about this bar, now, seems darker, more tired. It almost sucks the very air out of her lungs every time she walks in. She drags herself into the building and plops onto her regular stool. The old mechanist who usually sits nearby is on day three of his project to fix the music player in the corner, which had many of its inner workings jostled loose after some bloke got completely wasted and fell on it.

She catches Eren's eye and signals for scotch with her fingers. He gives her a small nod and starts to dig for the correct glass.

Sighing, she folds her arms in front of her over the counter and lays her head between them. She sits like this for a moment, noting how the blackened view looks no different whether her eyes are open or closed, until she hears the quiet sound of a glass being set down. She lifts her head.

A sheet of paper sits folded between the scotch glass and the counter. She narrows her eyes at it. Her arms separate and she picks up the glass with one hand and plucks the paper off the counter with the other. She shoots a glance at Eren, who for a second turns away from another customer to raise his eyebrows once.

Before reading, she takes one sip of her drink. The handwriting is in elegant script on the back of the folded paper – it takes a minute or so for the barely literate Ymir to decipher.

_Mikasa: please pass this note to Eren.  
Eren: please deliver this to Ymir, next time you see her.  
Thank you both.  
Christa._

She lets out a small hum, takes another sip, opens the paper with her thumb, and finds that the actual content of the note has been recorded with a typewriter.

_Ymir:  
If you can, and have the will to do so, please meet me behind The Oasis tomorrow night after the show. I would like to speak with you.  
Christa._

She blinks a few times at the message, glances back and forth between it and Eren, and struggles through reading it a second time. A cold, solid feeling settles in her stomach. She sets her glass on the bartop and grazes her sweaty fingertips over the ink.

Her heart skips a beat – she casts glances around the room, folds the paper and stuffs it into her pocket. She has to wonder why Christa would relay a message to her this way, and not just face-to-face while Ymir is at work.

She and Eren meet eyes for a second. And she sees his blond friend, Historia's cousin Armin. Armin notices and smiles at her.

**XXIV.**

Ymir begrudges this, but she makes an effort to be in the alley behind the backstage exit right at eleven p.m. and waits in the shadows there. Christa is the last to come out. She trots down the small staircase and holds the hem of her cloak in her fists as she scans the alley, but does not spot Ymir until the latter moves.

"Ymir," she says, "You came." A grin splits her face. She steps toward Ymir, who meets her almost halfway, shoulders hunched and hands in her pockets.

"What's going on?" Ymir asks.

Christa rocks back and forth on her heels and toes. "I want to apologize for yelling at you earlier." Her head bows. "I understand, now, what you were trying to tell me the other day at the wake. There is no point in shedding tears for the dead. I am alive and I have grown and I am going to move on, and that is all that matters."

Ymir shifts her weight onto her heels and thinks on the words a minute, chewing her lips until they form into a smirk and lifting one eyebrow at a time. "Well, that is a big part of it, I suppose."

Christa cautions a smile, at once proud and ambivalent.

Ymir smirks. "I figured out something, myself. The reason you want to run away." Christa's smile disappears.

"It's not because you like your identity as Christa or because you don't want to get married. It's because you are you and you're a lot like Walt, and as amazing as Walt was, you saw how he disappointed your family, and you want to please them so badly, you don't want to disappoint them like he did. You were born to play a certain role and you know it but you've never felt like you fit into that role." She lifts her arms for dramatic effect. "And so you think, if there were no Historia, the whole Reiss family would be better off."

Christa's eyes widen. They beam up at Ymir from under her drawn hood, and their gaze fades to the universe beyond. Her mouth opens, but she does not speak. Her jaw twitches a bit before she closes her lips.

"That's it, isn't it?" Ymir says. Her smile widens just barely, as though she feels a sense of accomplishment from taking the words straight out of Historia's mouth.

Her thoughts return to ground in an instant, and her eyes show it – they study Ymir's face and the blue in them intensifies.

"I am not a real Reiss," she says.

Ymir's jaw falls open. "What?" she stammers.

"Simon is not my real father." There is such confidence in her features that at first Ymir thinks this could be a joke. But it is not.

"I first figured it out on my own years ago – by accident, really," she says. "I got to thinking after my uncle Moritz told me how my father was rendered impotent by an accident with a horse just months after Adair was born. I was born a few years afterward. So, he may have raised me, but there is no way Simon Reiss is my biological father."

Ymir stares, shaking her head just barely side to side.

"Once I knew, I started to pay attention. I overheard some of the older staff members at the estate saying that my parents' marriage has not been nearly as happy since I was conceived, and I realized they were right: my parents are not actually happy together. That is the biggest reason why Adair acts so coldly toward me, too, I think. And why I can't do certain things. It's not that I am a girl or that I'm the youngest. It is because, even though Simon was gracious enough to accept me, at the end of the day, I am still not a real Reiss." She lowers her gaze, showing Ymir nothing but the top of her covered head. "No matter what I do – no matter how I look, how I act, what I say, what I think – I will never be a Reiss. I am just an embarrassment, a secret to sweep under the rug."

Ymir's lips grow taut. She swallows the mass in her throat, and leans downward and forward a little.

"Then, why even try?" she asks.

Historia lifts her head to fix her eyes on her again. "That is what I thought, eventually." A certain heaviness settles in her expression that is downright frightening in its solemnity. "I attempted to kill myself a few times, but found I could not bring myself to make the final move. So, running away became the next best option."

Her eyes become wet, and she blinks it away in a fraction of a second. "I just do not want to be a disappointment, a burden, a ticking time-bomb anymore."

She looks at once at and beyond Ymir, aiming her goddess gaze as the weight of what she has just spoken falls onto the two of them. Through the thick air they can hear a person stumbling out of the building on the other side of the alley and shuffling off, all out of their sight.

Ymir's eyebrows furrow and back straightens. "When I said 'why even try', I meant you shouldn't worry about them. Forget all them!" she says. "You don't need their bullshit. 'Snot your fault you're a bastard."

"Well – no – I—" She waves her arms back and forth. "I do like being Christa. I honestly do!"

"But creating Christa just because you can't be Historia is fuckin' stupid," Ymir declares. "Why don't you just go smack your parents in the faces and tell them to stop treating you like a second-class citizen?"

"I can't do that, Ymir," Historia snarls. "We have been over this." She smacks her open palms against her chest. "I may not have fabricated the Christa identity until I started making plans to run away, but Christa as a person has always been inside me. I just wanted to be someone else when I do the things Christa does so I would not embarrass my family any further. A Reiss cannot conspire or curse or dance in chorus lines."

"That's no excuse; that's just catering to them, don't you see?" Ymir says. She lifts a finger for each grievance she lists: "They treated you like shit, they tried to brainwash you, they took away your choice on who to marry, they condescended to you. They've been jackasses to you, and they should be groveling at your feet, begging your forgiveness, and you're doing nothing to make that happen by disappearing." She balls her raised hand into a fist. "You could punish them by ruining the shit out of their reputation but you hide instead." She latches both hands onto Christa's shoulders.

"Why do you do that, Christa? Is it the money? Is it for your own image? Or is it just because you care so damn much about your stupid garbage family?" She brings her face close to Christa's – within inches—, eyes locked like daggers onto hers. "Don't you try to convince me it's not that last reason."

By now Christa's ears and eyes and nose have tinted red, and even tears have started to pool, but she grits her teeth and consciously tenses. "Not everyone can be as selfish as you," she says.

"Yes, that's right: I am selfish. I'm the most self-centered person I know." Ymir pulls away a bit, and takes one hand off Christa's shoulder to gesture at herself. "I'm a piece of shit."

Christa's teeth grind harder.

"But you know what? The world is full of pieces of shit, and if you don't act like one yourself then you're destined to be fucking miserable until you die." She removes her other hand with a slight push. "You, Historia, are miserable, and unless you start living for yourself, miserable is the only thing you'll ever be."

Ymir snaps the collar of her jacket and takes a step away. "You can take me out of your runaway plans if you want," she says, "But don't talk to me again until you figure out what the hell you're doing."

She stomps out of the alleyway, disappearing into the night around the corner of the closest building. She flips her collar up further to cover her neck and hunches into the cloth. Her gloved hands cover her mouth, her breath warming them. The chill of the temperature strikes her all the sudden. She keeps her glare steady down the end of the road, where one of the gaslamps flickers barely enough to stay lit. Her insides feel dense with an anger she cannot recognize.

She hears a few footsteps back by the alley.

"Why do you even care?" Christa's words bite her so hard that her heart nearly skips a beat and she has to will herself to keep walking.

She speaks again, louder, more forcefully. "I asked you a question, Ymir."

The growl in Christa's voice as she utters her name is what makes Ymir finally stop. Her muscles freeze in place – she takes a moment to gain control of herself, breathing the crisp air in deep and pivoting to face the girl far behind her.

Their eyes lock, Christa's glare clear and intense, Ymir's solid. She lifts her chin and almost opens her mouth, but stops herself, hitches up her collar again, and treads back to her apartment alone.

**XXV.**

The hammering on her door wakes her not too long after sunrise.

Ymir pushes the blanket off her body and stomps across the small room, ignoring the dizzy feeling of blood rushing out of her head. "What the hell?" she mutters. She opens the door to throw glances down each end of the hallway. No one.

She is about to retreat to her bed when she sees the sign that has been nailed to the center of the door. She squints at the words. Notice of Eviction. It takes another short moment for her to process what they mean. She does not have to read the rest.

Loosing a stream of swears under her breath, she trudges to the water-damaged credenza at the back of the room, flings open a drawer and rifles through the clothes inside. She pulls out a cardigan – stained, too small, and half torn to shreds – and sticks her hands into the pockets. All she finds is one doubloon.

"Fuck me," she spits. She sifts through the rest of the drawer, pulls out every single garment, searches all the other drawers just to be sure.

Her breathing becomes ragged, the pressure in her jaw immense. She scans the room for anything she can live without. She could sell her pocketwatch, her usual hairband, not the flask – no way, never –, possibly some clothes.

She steps over the clothes strewn on the floor around her, out the door, and to the suite at the end of the hall. She almost punches the door, but instead stops herself when she lifts her fist, and raps her knuckles against the wood.

Her landlord answers within a minute. Some light she cannot identify reflects off his bald head. "Can I help you?"

She sucks in a breath, tenses and relaxes her arms, and releases the air from her throat.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" just spouts from her. She gestures toward her apartment.

His lips draw taut. "Oh, it's you." He licks the bottom of his mustache and shifts his weight a bit. "Lady, you've been late on your rent payment one too many times. I've had enough."

She touches the tips of her fingers to her sternum. "This is bullshit," she says.

The man shakes his head. She opens her mouth but catches herself, freezes, chomps her teeth together and starts again.

"Look, Dot," she says, "I can come up with the money."

"But you haven't," he says. He shrugs his shoulders, lifting his arms. "Wish I could help ya, but I need to eat too, you know. You need to go."

She can see the purple wine stains on his facial hair, smell the musky cologne on his clothes.

She almost blurts, "Fuck you," but bites her tongue. She looks over her shoulder at her door – the sign is still visible from here.

"What if I give you your damn payment before the end of the day?" she offers, showing him open palms.

He regards her, raising one bushy eyebrow. "All of it? Everything you owe me?"

She nods before she can even think.

He hums and presses his fingers to his chin. His lips curl a bit at the edges. "Why not?" he says, mostly to himself. He blinks at her and his smile widens. "You have until eight tonight."

Ymir lifts her arms high, claps them together and rolls her eyes toward the ceiling. "Praise the fucking Lord," she murmurs.

"You're damn right," he says. He points a stern finger at her. He shuts the door.

Boiling on the inside, Ymir canters back to her apartment, throws on a trenchcoat, and sips the last of the tepid whiskey from her flask, which she then stuffs into her pocket. She gathers her watch and embroidered hairband in a bundle of some of her nicer clothes.

She nearly forgets to lock her door as she leaves, races out of the building, stands on the sidewalk and lets out a scream.

**XXVI.**

She slams all her things onto the counter when her turn comes. "What can I get for selling these?" she demands.

The man (middle aged and dressed to the nines as if he's important) behind the counter picks apart the bundle of items, and inspects each with eyebrows furrowed. He looks her in the face.

"The only thing I'm willing to buy is the hairband." He separates it from the rest, pushing them toward her. "Nothing else."

Ymir scoffs. "What, my stuff isn't good enough for your shitty store?"

"Well," he replies, grimacing and clearing his throat, "No, it isn't."

She grits her teeth behind a frown, swallowing down all the expletives that rush to her mind.

"Since this is so nice, I can give you one silver piece," he says. "—That's me being generous." He traces a thumb over the embroidery.

She pushes the tips of her fingers against her forehead, rubbing her hairline, and closes her eyes. "I'm not even in the mood to negotiate," she groans. She holds out an empty palm. A minute later, he drops the coin into it.

She wonders, coming in to work, if she can sell any of her things to the others. Maybe Sasha needs a jacket with a missing button or Connie isn't too dumb to read a clock after all.

Most of the other staff doesn't notice, but Marco does. He smiles and compliments Ymir on her hair in his bright Marco way. She touches the back, where her usual ponytail has been haphazardly hacked off with a pocketknife, looks at him funny and walks away.

That is when the idea strikes her.

**XXVII.**

It has to be somewhere – she has to be hiding it somewhere.

Ymir fumbles through the dimly lit bedroom, pulling out every drawer, flinging open every door, checking in every crevice. She finds makeup, old dolls, jewelry. She considers grabbing them, for a minute, but she needs something direct or she's sure to be caught.

She slams herself against the leg of the vanity and scrambles through the oblong drawer. Her eyes settle for a second on the empty vase on the surface. Her chest starts to feel like sinking, but she shakes it off and pushes herself to keep looking.

"Ymir?"

She gasps and spins in the direction of the voice. She did not even hear the door open, or notice the person entering.

The room is a mess: throw pillows piled into a mountain beside a stripped bed, drawers pulled all the way off their tracks and their contents strewn about, clothes ripped out of the armoire to be rumpled on the floor, furniture moved. Everything out of place, as if a storm has blown through.

Historia stands in the doorway, her figure almost entirely dark against the bright hall light, and gawks at the carnage around her. "Ymir, what are you doing?" she stammers. Her jaw refuses to shut.

For a moment, Ymir cannot move. Her eyes are wide, breaths are shallow and face is flushed, and her hands are caught right in the middle of her search. She swears her heart has been vacuumed up into her throat.

At length Historia grits her teeth hard and steels her gaze. "Ymir," she says, her voice solid, "Please, stop whatever you are doing." She takes a calculated step toward her, holding up her arms. "Turn around."

A chill racks Ymir's very veins that loosens her muscles and gathers air into her lungs. She almost turns, but instead keeps her back to Historia and glares defensively at her over her shoulder.

"You do not have to do this," Historia says. She continues approaching. Her sparkling goddess words flow from her mouth all the while. "You do not have to destroy my bedroom. Calm down. I can help you."

She reaches the vanity, stops, and gently lays a hand on Ymir's closer shoulder. "Please, just talk to me. I miss you so much."

Ymir's expression twists into and then out of a frown. She removes her hands from the drawer, dropping them limp at her sides.

And Historia leads her to the chairs in the corner of the room, Ymir's heavy feet crunching through the debris as Historia's dress floats over it. She sits Ymir down and keeps her ginger hands on her shoulders.

"What is going on?" she asks. Her clear blue eyes read every inch of Ymir's face.

Consciously she bites her lip to bottle up the tiny explosions inside her. She fortifies her emotional walls but Historia's gaze pierces through them like a cannonball through a wet scrap of paper, sucking out the life inside her and she can't sit here under its pressure any longer without—

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she exclaims. "We're not even on speaking terms, and I break into your room, ransack it, wreck it, and your first reaction is to help me?"

"Of course," Historia says. Her tone is slightly sharp beneath the sweetness.

Ymir scoffs. "Why the fuck would you even think that?"

At once Historia's face tenses. She pushes herself off Ymir.

"I don't know," she says pointedly. "Maybe because I care about you?" Her blond eyebrows furrow and unfurrow, and from this angle she takes a few seconds to regard her friend's expression, her disheveled clothes, her uneven short hair. She smiles.

"Even if you have your own reasons and there are things you cannot tell me, Ymir, no matter what, I am on your side."

Her heart stops – her heart just stops.

She blinks hard up at Historia, and tries to will her brain to think, her lips to move, her diaphragm to breathe but everything inside her is shutting down and it's the most uncomfortable thing she has ever felt, it makes her feel sick and it's wonderful. Her jaw falls open and she forces out half a grunt. In the catatonia, her eyes fall on the diamond ring on Historia's gloved finger.

**XXVIII.**

"It feels so odd, coming out here in the daytime dressed like this," Historia says. Her eyes run along the low ceiling.

There are just two customers ahead of them in the queue now; for some reason, she has butterflies in her stomach.

Ymir only hopes that Christa does not attract too much attention. This is supposed to be quick and confidential, she mentally assures herself over and over as she shifts her balance from one foot to the other.

Historia chuckles and faces Ymir. "I am sorry, but I'm afraid I still do not quite understand. What is a pawnshop?"

"It's a place people like to go when they don't have money coming out of their ears," Ymir says. She sticks her hands in her pockets. "You can buy stuff here – a big variety of stuff, but what makes this place different is that the customers are in charge of what gets sold here. You bring in everything you've got that's worth anything, and the broker takes a look at it, tells you what it's worth, haggles with you, and then you either sell it or pawn it."

"What is the difference?" Historia asks.

"When you sell something, the transaction is permanent. Your thing is gone forever, going to be sold in the store to someone else, but the broker gives you full price." A pang rises in her chest. She throws quick glimpses around the showroom in search of what she gave away this morning, but the hairband is nowhere to be seen. It makes her hands clench into fists by themselves. "When you pawn something, you loan it to the broker in exchange for some money, but you have to pay back the loan after a few months at the most, or it'll become store property and get sold with everything else."

Historia nods once, her lips pursed in contemplation. "How very useful."

Ymir leans low toward her, bringing her voice down. "Now, remember, we are here to pawn your ring for as much as we can get, and I'll buy it back for you as soon as my next payday comes."

"Got it." Historia nods again and grins. The two of them step forward to wait shuffling their feet behind one last person.

When they finally get to the counter, the jeweler bids them a friendly hello. Historia returns it, and she wiggles her engagement ring off the finger on her left hand and hands it to the man. "How much money could I get for this?" she asks. Ymir stands right behind her, watching every movement.

The man turns it in his hand and raises an eyebrow at it. Humming, he pulls his loupe out of his front pocket and squints at the ring through the lens. A toothy smile sprouts a hundred wrinkles on his face. "Well, what do you know," he declares. "It's real." He lowers the loupe back into his pocket.

Of course it's real, Ymir thinks, but she holds her tongue and presses her palm against the edge of the counter to lean forward.

"You looking to pawn or sell?" His gray eyes shine with some kind of hope.

"Sell," Historia answers.

Ymir jumps. She turns her head toward Christa. "No, pawn," she says slowly.

Historia returns the look with confidence. "Sell," she repeats. She gives a little nod and returns her attention to the jeweler. Ymir raises her eyebrows but does not offer any more correction.

"Very well then." He plays with it for a few seconds, studying the smoothness of the gold and the way the diamond reflects the dim light as if the very sun is directly above it. "I can give you ten golds," he says.

"What?" Ymir exclaims. "That's a fuckin' rip-off. That ring is worth twenty at least."

"When we're selling it, yes," he says, "But there's no way we'd buy it for that much. We'd get nothing more out of it."

"Bullshit – you'd get plenty of extra doubloons for it. It's a real, big-ass diamond for God's sake."

"There's no way any of our regular customers would be able to afford it if we sold it for more than twenty," he argues.

"Eighteen." "Ten." Historia watches their exchange in silence, half bewildered by the speed and half appalled that the price is even negotiable. "Eighteen." "Twelve." "Sixteen."

"Fourteen is the absolute highest I'll go," he says, and he slices through the air with both arms.

At this Ymir turns to Historia, leaning a little to compensate for the height difference. "Well, what do you think? Fourteen good?"

Historia blinks at her and glances between her, the ring, the jeweler, back to her, back to the ring, back to her. "How much do you need?" she whispers.

Ymir thinks a minute, touching her teeth together behind her lips, lowering her eyebrows. Then she turns toward the man.

"Fifteen."

"Fourteen," he asserts.

She slams both her palms on the counter. "Fourteen golds and a silver."

He lets out a loud grunt, rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, cocks his head. He taps the fingers of his free hand on the counter one at a time. After a moment he takes another long look at the ring.

"Fine."

**XXIX.**

As they make their way down the block Ymir paws through the tiny drawstring bag a fourth time, just to be sure everything is there. At this point most workers' lunch breaks have ended, so the streets are fairly empty, and the sun is hot and high.

Historia keeps in stride with her. "That sure was thrilling," she says with a smile.

Ymir snatches the bag closed at the mouth, stuffs it into her pocket and turns grimacing toward Historia.

"I told you to pawn, not sell, you idiot," she says. She holds off on hitting her upside the back of the head.

"But you would not have gotten as much money if I had only pawned the ring," Historia explains. She glances at the cobblestone sidewalk beneath her shoes. "Besides, I am running away rather soon anyhow, so I have no use for it."

Soles scrape to a halt against the stones. "You're still actually considering that shit?" Historia stops as well, a couple feet ahead, and gazes up at Ymir's face from underneath her hood.

"Yes, I am," she says defensively.

Ymir groans. "God, Christa. Have you not thought at all about what we talked about that night two weeks ago? You shouldn't be doing something if your reasons make no sense – running away is a stupid idea."

"I'll have you know I have thought a great deal on our discussion," Historia retorts. "That is why I have been avoiding you since: you said to not speak to you until I, quote, 'figured out what the hell I was doing.'" She takes a deep breath. "And I do know what I am doing. I have been corresponding through typewritten letters with my cousin Armin, his friend Eren Jaeger, and Eren's sister Mikasa, who happens to be one of my coworkers. I have used the Jaeger family's connections to arrange hiding places throughout the countryside and a few places abroad as well. I know what routes to take; I know what mode of transportation I will use to reach each place; I know how long each journey will take me and how long I can stay once I reach each destination. I have taken great pains to ensure that my plans remain inconspicuous." She realizes she is leaning forward, and takes a step back and collects herself for a second.

"Wow," Ymir says under her breath, lifting her eyebrows just a bit.

"But I suppose that is not what you meant."

"It's not," she affirms.

Historia sticks up a bony index finger. "I'd figured as much." She drops her hand and tears her eyes away from Ymir, snarling.

"Do you know what gets me, though? After pondering everything you yelled at me that night, I cannot come up with any explanation that would satisfy you, because you yourself do not make any sense! It is the – damnedest thing." She swings a fist half a foot through the air. "When you first confronted me about my secret identity, you said you would accept it and let me be who I wanted to be, but now you say Christa is a foolish fabrication. When I first told you I wanted to run away, you were in support of the idea, but now you hate the decision."

"I thought you were just doing those things for the thrill!" Ymir shouts. She pounds her hand against her chest. "I loved your dancing and I loved your conspiracies because I thought sneaking around and having fun was just the kind of thing you wanted to do." Her hand slices through the air. "But then I found out your reasons, and they made me so – so angry!"

"Why should my reasons make you feel anything?" Historia says.

"Because you're not doing any of this for yourself at all! You're doing it to please some shitbags who don't deserve you, and it makes me angry because I have seen people get hurt so many times just because they were doing something crazy for someone else's sake." She inches forward and gets low, eyes exactly parallel to Historia's. "And you're too spoiled and too stupid to realize what you're really doing to yourself, and it is justinfuriating because I have watched you from afar every day since That Night and you're so perfect you made me actually believe there is a God again and I think about you all the time and my heart hurts every night when I go to sleep and dream about you and you have been so good to me even though I am the worst human being in the world – not even a human being, I'm so low! You're a fucking angel yet you spend all your time and energy catering to assholes like me, and it hurts to watch, okay? It hurts!"

Ymir pulls away, spitting, "God. Fuck." She takes a moment to catch her breath, hunched over, fists clenched, totally red in the face, stomach churning and blood boiling and legs shaking weak at the knees.

"Why did you sell the ring?" she asks. "Why did you even accept the ring in the first place? Why – why did you blame yourself for your position instead of the people who forced you into it?" She throws her head toward the sky. "Why, why? Why, Christa, why? I don't understand."

The silence that stretches between them is deafening. Historia stares at Ymir from two yards' distance. Her body is frozen and her throat is hot, itchy, tight. The sun beats down on them.

"I asked you this once, and I will ask you again," Historia says quietly. "Why do you even care?"

Ymir lowers her head and her shaking fists, and meets Christa's eyes.

"You want me to live for myself; you advocate it, say that is how you live, too. You do whatever you can to appear selfish." She brings her index finger to a point in Ymir's direction. "But, do you know what? I think you do care about other people. You do have feelings – you just do not want to, or know how to, express them."

Ymir's mouth hangs open a little. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You used to give me carnations every week. You danced with me on the tabletop at Wings of Freedom. You walked me home from work each night. You adjusted my corset when it had been cinched too tightly."

"That's just because I'm in fucking love with you, you piece of shit," Ymir says with a frown. Her chest feels heavy at the mere concept of the words.

Historia thinks on this for a few seconds. "That does not account for the fact that you want to teach me a lesson on living for myself. Pursuing contact with me is one thing, but trying to protect me is something else, I believe." She steps forward and raises her arms out to her sides, lifting the cloak with them.

"Admit it, Ymir," she says. "You actually care about someone other than yourself. Maybe not as much as you care about yourself, but you care nonetheless."

Ymir breaks their eye contact and tries to keep a furious blush at bay.

"And I think I have realized something." She takes another step. "The biggest reason why I want to run away is not because I do not want to burden my family and not because I do not want to trap Reiner in a sham marriage." Another step. "It is because I truly like the thought of running away with you."

Ymir's head snaps in Historia's direction – she gawks at her and her expression slowly softens into disbelief, as she studies the shallow wrinkle of sincerity between Christa's eyebrows. Across the street, pedestrians retreat into buildings; a mother corrals her children into an apothecary.

"You are dearer to me than I can say," Christa mumbles. Her wide blue eyes drink in Ymir's features, settle on them. Then she bows her head so lowly that her hood totally covers her face. "Thank you for your honesty."

Ymir swallows back a warm, hard feeling in her throat. Legs shaking, she takes a step forward. Her arms lift and bend in stiff jerks until her hands land on Christa's shoulders. Christa looks up at her. And all the sudden their faces are so close, they can feel each other's breaths tickling their top lips, and the tiny breezes their eyelashes make with every blink.

"I'm not an honest person," Ymir warns.

"I know," Christa replies. "You're quite terrible, actually. The worst personality I have ever encountered."

Ymir's head tilts just a bit to the side, as she brings it closer to Christa's and exhales hard enough to bristle the invisible hairs on her skin.

"Then why would you put up with me, if I'm so terrible?" she growls.

At this a shock surges through Ymir's body – and she yanks Christa's tiny body toward her and smacks her lips against Christa's before the girl can even speak. She burrows into Christa's mouth. Hot saliva pools between their lips, and Christa's chest writhes with a gasp she moans out and her arms fly upward, parting her cloak and extending inside Ymir's grip to rake around the back of Ymir's neck. Ymir pushes herself into her and runs her tongue along the inside of her teeth – like she can eat the answers out of her, as if she is some mindless giant beast with a beautiful little creature, delicate and warm in her clawed grasp and she wants it to live but all she knows is destroy, all she can do is destroy. Christa moans again, pressing her chest against Ymir's and sweeping her fingers along Ymir's jaw.

She tastes like breakfast, biscuits and coffee so creamed and sugared that it's barely coffee, and the stink of whiskey on Ymir's breath burns her gums. Christa inhales through the nose, making a hissing sound against Ymir's skin.

Ymir laps at the roof of Christa's mouth, separates and then bites down on the fattest part of Christa's bottom lip. The saliva drips off her chin. Christa leaks out a shuddering breath. Ymir sucks on Christa's lip, massaging it a bit with her teeth before pulling away with the tiniest of popping sounds.

Christa gives a quiet moan of disappointment, but pushes her head away, takes a deep breath, and sighs it out. She pants quietly, her eyes flutter open. Her fingers uncurl from around Ymir's neck when Ymir straightens her back and her hands leave her shoulders but hover inches over them. The inside of her mouth tingling, Ymir wipes off the saliva with her sleeve.

"On second thought," she says, her voice itching out of the base of her throat, "Don't answer that."

Christa sighs again. She mashes her top lip against the bottom, senses the sticky wetness there and dries it with the hem of her cloak. "I, um." She clears her throat with a fist pressed to her mouth. "I had forgotten the question, anyway." She grins and chuckles. Her cheeks are dark pink.

Half a smirk chances its way onto Ymir's face. She clamps her palm down on Christa's upper back, turns her on her heels and starts both of them walking. Her heart races – she tries to control her breathing rate to make it stop. Christa, warm and soft little animal Christa, shuffles her feet beside her.

She can tell Christa wants to say something: she can sense the words bubbling in her lungs, trying to escape. But she does not speak for a very long time. They go down street after street, ignoring every person they pass. Ymir drops the hand she has on Christa's back and lays it on the large lump in her pocket. The sun makes them sweat.

"Out of curiosity," Christa finally says, folding her hands together in front of her, "For what did you need the money from my ring?"

Ymir's heart leaps into her mouth, and out comes, "Needed to pay my tab at Wings of Freedom."

"I see," Christa says. She gazes into the distance, gears turning in her brain. A solemn look crosses her features.

"You really should stop drinking so much."

"I should, shouldn't I?" Ymir says with a restrained laugh.

Things are not that simple, though. Things are never that simple.

**XXX.**

It is Ymir's morning to come in first: she drags herself through the dewy grass, while the sun has not yet shown itself and the air is still a thick and soupy blue, to the stables.

She fumbles for the keys Keith gave her last night. All she can find, instead, is the glass flask buried in her trouser pocket. She frowns, pulls it out, twists off the cap, takes a quick swig of the spirit inside, mutters, "Shit," puts on the cap, and stuffs it back in. But when she takes a look at the door, she realizes it is ajar.

Eyebrow cocked, she inhales deeply and pulls the door fully open. Dust swarms at her.

One of the horses – an Appaloosa belonging to a member of the court – eyes her lazily. She eases one foot into the stable, then the other, throwing looks all about. For the first minute the room is too dark for her to make out anything outside a radius of a few yards.

She skulks around one end of the structure first. All the while, her mind races. She was sure she locked the door last night. Sure, sure, sure.

She makes her way to the other end of the room and comes upon Vega's stall. The gate is partway unlatched, and the palomino stands with an alert expression. Sprawled on the pile of hay in the back corner of the stall is Historia, in her white nightgown and fast asleep.

Ymir gulps down a hard lump in her throat. She stands at the gate, watching the slow rise and fall of Historia's chest. The blue morning light streams through the dingy window at the back of the stall and dances glittering upon her unconscious body.

Vega nickers once. Historia stirs; the hay rustles beneath her. She lets out a small moan. Her arms constrict and then stretch, her legs following. She lets her limbs go limp again, but a yawn squeaks out of her mouth, and she opens her eyes to squint through the blue light at her horse.

"Aw, shoot, Vega," she mumbles. "Good morning." Vega responds with a soft nicker. Historia smiles.

She sits up and her long blond hair is a mess of tangles and straw. She sighs into the dust, eases off the pile of hay, pads up to the front of the stall, and wraps her arms around Vega's neck. She lays the side of her head against Vega's. Her eyes close and she smiles wider. At length she lets go of the creature, taking a step away, and crosses her arms over her chest to clutch her shoulders as if to signal she's cold.

"What does Keith usually give you?" she asks under her breath. She turns to slip out of the stall through the gate – when she notices Ymir's presence. She jumps back, her face paling. Her hand flies to her chest.

"Apples," Ymir says, "Keith gives the horses apples every morning." Her lips pull back in a lopsided smile that shows her teeth.

"Goodness, Ymir, you startled me," she breathes. Her features straighten, and she glances over her shoulder at the hay and then faces her again. "How long have you been in here?" she asks.

"Not long," Ymir dismisses.

She purses her lips, extracts a large piece of straw from Historia's hair, and drops it to the ground. "I'll go get the apples." She sighs and turns and heads for the main stable door. Historia gives her a small "thanks" on the way out.

The sun just starts to peek over the horizon. Ymir slinks out of the structure, and presses her body against the outside wall. Her hands trembling, she forces herself to breathe and sneaks two greedy swigs from her flask.

She spies Reiner and Bertholdt approaching from halfway across the pasture. The two of them are not talking, but Bertholdt carries an armful of apples close to his chest, and Reiner uses his hand to block the sun from his eyes.

"Morning, Ymir," Reiner says with a smile.

"Morning!" The reply jumps out of her. Both of the young men give her a nod and head inside the stable. All the sudden she grits her teeth and looks in their direction, but does not see them anymore.

She hears Historia exclaim at the men's presence. "What are you doing here this early?" she asks politely.

Ymir saunters back inside.

"We just wanted to check on Ambrose," Reiner explains. Bertholdt has already passed him and started to interact with the Friesian in the end stall, clicking his tongue at the creature and holding out apples for it to munch. Ambrose is the horse Reiner brought from home, a pure black, agile, stoic thing on which he dotes as much as a Reiss would. (Funny, Ymir never really cared for horses until she started working here among them. The longer she stays, the more she understands their appeal.)

"Want to go for a ride?" Reiner offers.

Historia feigns a chuckle and gestures at her nightgown and bare feet. "I would love to join you, but I am not quite in the condition…" She trails off, angling her head to the side – and in doing so sees Ymir just inside the doorway, watching.

"Ymir." Historia pads over.

Reiner calls to them from halfway across the room, "Why don't you join us, Historia? We don't care how presentable you are. Ymir can come too, if she likes."

"That sounds lovely, actually," Historia replies. She brings her gaze from over her shoulder to Ymir's profile. And she stares, waiting for a response from the woman.

Ymir grits her teeth and jams her hands into her pockets. She remains silent for about half a minute.

At that Historia turns toward them and says, "Ymir would love to come." She looks at Ymir again and furrows her eyebrows, and grabs her by the arm and drags her toward Vega's stall.

Historia stands Ymir in front of Vega's gate and leaves her for a moment to fetch a blanket, bridle and saddle. Ymir scans Vega up and down, scowling, and Vega glares back at her. She glances at Reiner, who stands a couple yards away with a smirk on his face and his arms crossed over his chest.

Historia returns, having retrieved a shiny red apple from Bertholdt, and holds the equipment between her legs and under one arm as she hands the fruit to Vega, who accepts the gift without any hesitation. She chuckles and strokes the top of her horse's head as it chews.

**Notes: **

***I had some cool fonts to use for the notes but FFN does not like them, of course.

***Walt died when his plane crashed in the Himalayas.

***Historia is indeed illegitimate. There is a story behind why, but that is for a different time.

***Ymir had snuck into Historia's room to look for her stash of dancing money.

***Just like in the canon universe, Grisha Jaeger is an influential doctor and Erwin Smith is an illustrious military commander.

***Fun fact: Walt admired his uncle Erwin so much that he enlisted in the military just to be like him. Also, Historia started learning ballet at age three because she felt inspired to dance after the Arlerts took her to a recital.

***People who know/knew only that Historia has plans to run away: Walt, Reiner.  
People who know details about the plan: Ymir, Armin, Eren, Mikasa.  
People who know Historia and Christa are the same person: Ymir, Armin, Hanji, and eventually Eren and Mikasa.


	4. xxxi-xxxix

**thanks for all the feedback and everything! you're so sweet. (: **

**thus, the fic is completed. the ending is supposed to be open - and yes, there are only nine parts to this final chapter. there might be a sequel - or might not - i am not a very reliable writer (as you might be able to tell from the number of unfinished projects i have out in the open). **

**XXXI. **

"Ambrose is actually Bertl's horse," Reiner says. "Mine died in its very first battle, but Ambrose survived every single one."

"That is amazing," Historia marvels. She adds something about the horse's luck having to do with its name, and she and Reiner and Bertholdt chuckle a little at the joke, and Ymir squints at them for some explanation as to why this even made sense.

The four of them have been out for an hour or so. The sun has exposed itself and warmed the air considerably, but the breeze and occasional cloud cover make for a more tolerable climate. Ymir watches the horizon for every little movement as she tries to not focus on the fact that Historia is sitting right in front of her, practically in her lap, steering Vega's reins. She is sure they have left Reiss property by now, but has no idea exactly where they are. She did not even know a meadow like this existed so close to town.

"Did the two of you meet while in the military?" Historia asks.

"Oh, no – we've known each other since we were small." He pauses and leans his head back just a tad. "How old were we, Bertl?"

"Three or four, I think," he answers, touching the tip of his index finger to his chin.

Reiner shrugs. "Eh. Small, at any rate. He's been my personal butler for about as long as I can remember. But we were raised side-by-side, so we're more like close friends than master-servant." Bertholdt nods and hums in agreement.

Smiling, Reiner turns his head for a second to get at least part of Bertholdt in his peripheral. "Yep, Bertl and I have stuck with each other through a lot, even outside our time in the war. When one of my baby sisters died from the flu, Bertl was there for our family; and then, when Bertl's half-brother was murdered a few years ago, I finally got to return the favor."

"I must say I am jealous. I do not have such a close relationship with my personal assistant. She is much older than I am, and strict, and always giving me advice when I do not ask for it."

"It is nice having someone around who understands everything about you," Reiner says. Bertholdt says, "I think so, too."

Just a couple minutes later, the four of them reach the top of a shallow hill. Historia tugs on Vega's reins and tells Reiner to stop Ambrose here. "This is the place," she says. Ymir raises an eyebrow as Historia slides off the saddle and scopes the landscape. "This is the place," she repeats in a whisper. She touches an open palm to the trunk of a pear tree.

Bertholdt and Reiner dismount, and Ymir does as well; Bertholdt leads Ambrose and Reiner leads Vega to the tree, where they tether the horses' bridles to one of the lower, stronger branches.

Historia stands beside the tree, the wind teasing her messy hay-strewn hair, the grass staining the hem of her dress. She gazes into the distance, far beyond the blue sky and the faint appearance of faraway buildings. Ymir watches her lose herself for an eternal moment – then stretch and sit on the ground at the other side of the tree. She shuffles through the grass to join her and stands atop a protruding root, casting a shadow over her. Historia looks up at her.

"Are you all right, Ymir?"

"Why did you take us here?" Ymir asks. "What is this place, even?"

Historia's eyes remain on her in silence. At length she rises to her feet. A gust of wind races past them, and Historia smiles into it and lifts her arms.

"Sometimes when we were little, Walt and Adair and I would come here," she says. "None of us has been here in ages, though." Her smile cracks wider and she chuckles.

Suddenly she tears into a sprint across the top of the hill. The instant the ground starts to decline she takes a dive and rolls down the gentle slope.

Ymir, Reiner and Bertholdt are at first frozen in shock and confusion, but soon Reiner approaches the edge of the hill, and Ymir follows him.

"What the fuck was that?" Ymir calls down to her. She has reached the bottom of the hill, and lies there with her limbs sprawled and her skin and dress covered in grass and dirt.

"I wanted to see if this would be as fun as it was when I was little," she yells back.

Ymir and Reiner exchange glances. "Was it?"

She pauses to catch her breath before simply responding: "Try it!"

"That looks rather unsafe," Bertholdt says from close behind them.

"Bertl, for Christ's sake." Reiner spins on his heels, grins, grabs Bertholdt by the shoulders, drags him forward and shoves him down the hill. Ymir cannot help but laugh at the way he tumbles. Reiner jumps straight after him.

The two men reach the foot of the hill at almost the same time, Reiner landing on top of his butler. Reiner lets out a raucous laugh, and Bertholdt laughs underneath him, and Historia laughs with them, her chest floundering.

Ymir kicks a clump of dirt as she gets closer to the edge. "You're idiots," she calls. But they don't really care.

Grumbling, she sneaks a sip of whiskey and trots down the slope to meet them.

The three of them sigh at the same time. Historia pushes herself into a sitting position, leaving her palms against the ground for balance. Reiner sits up too but does not move.

"Would you mind not sitting on me?" Bertholdt asks.

Reiner crosses his arms. He cocks his head, rolls his eyes skyward and hums in thought. "Naw." He starts snickering, and Bertholdt half-grins-half-grimaces as he pushes his master off him.

Ymir takes in the rolling bright green field stretched before her, the shine of the sun on the remaining dew, the clover patches and rabbits venturing out of their holes. The wind is far weaker down here.

"Never thought your folks would let you or your brothers hang out in places like this," she says.

Historia shakes her head. "Walt would sneak us out for a few hours at a time. I do not quite remember when we stopped doing this… I think it was when Walt first left for war."

She heaves another sigh and gazes into the sky. She draws her knees close to her chest and wraps her arms around her legs. Her eyes catch Reiner with his fists loosely around Bertholdt's wrists and Bertholdt pushing against his force, eyes locked on each other and grinning. Their arms lower at the same time, and they laugh.

"Bertholdt, you are always so mild-mannered," Historia says. "I have never seen you act this way before – or laugh. You do have a nice laugh."

Reiner elbows him. "See? I told you your laugh isn't embarrassing."

"Yes it is," Bertholdt protests. He lifts his hands to cover his face. She giggles.

Only half joking, Ymir has the mind to ask the men if they're buggering. She settles on a suspicious smirk, instead.

In the brief ensuing silence, Reiner decides he feels warm, so he sloughs off his jacket, folds it and lays it in the grass beside him. He cuffs up his sleeves as well. Ymir notices a scar on his forearm, likely left over from a battle. Now that she has an adequate view of him, in fact, she notices other scars, too.

Ymir rolls up her sleeves almost to her elbows and holds out her outer forearms. "I've got these matching scars on my arms," she says. "When I was little, one of my friends was the son of a blacksmith. He was messing around with one of his father's swords and I got in the way. Nearly sliced off my hands."

"Goodness," Historia gasps, bringing her fingers to her mouth.

Reiner chuckles and touches his hand to the side of his neck. He pulls his shirt collar away from his skin and pivots to let the others have a view. "This one almost killed me," he says proudly.

"I would bet," Ymir says.

He returns to a normal position, letting go of his collar, and points a thumb at his butler. "Bertl has a _nasty_-looking scar on his chest from when a canon shell narrowly missed him. I had never heard him utter profanity until that day." Bertholdt lowers his hands from his face with a nervous chuckle.

"Do you've any scars?" Reiner asks Historia as he and Ymir eye her.

She tilts her head. "Only one," she says. "It is not that noticeable, however, and the story behind it is not as exciting as any of yours." She resituates her legs and lifts the bottom of her dress halfway up her calf. "I merely cut my leg on a protruding nail a few years ago in the stables." The gash mark is slightly paler than the surrounding skin. Reiner nods at it.

"I've got another one right here," he says, pointing to the bullet scar on his arm. "Thankfully it missed the bone when it hit me."

"Aren't you lucky?" Ymir eases her torso backward onto the ground and props her hands underneath her head, elbows out to the sides. She bends her knees and kicks one leg over the other.

She glances to the side for a moment, plucks a long blade of grass out of the ground, and sticks the stem in her mouth.

"I guess I am fortunate in many ways," he says. He rubs the back of his neck sorely.

She chews a bit and switches the grass' side inside her mouth. "I have scars all over my back," she says. "The job I had just before this one was in a textile mill, and the supervisor would whip us whenever he thought we were slacking off."

"Oh, my," Historia exclaims.

"I can see why you would want to change vocation," Reiner says with a nod.

The sun peeks out from behind a small, thin cloud. Ymir shuts her eyes to the brightness. Wind whistles off the top of the hill.

"I have been curious, Ymir," Historia says after a pause. "Do you have any family?"

Ymir thinks for only a few seconds on the question. "Not really. I don't talk to any of them." She tucks her chin to her chest to get a view of everybody. "See, family has sort of a different function for people like me. It's a place you get your looks from, not a code of laws."

"I would say our looks _are_ our code of laws," Historia replies. She turns toward her fiancé. "My parents probably would not allow Reiner to marry me if he did not have the hair for it."

"As if your family goes shopping for blonds, come marrying age," Reiner adds.

"The Reiss aesthetic," she lilts with a shrug. They chuckle.

Historia sighs. "It really is a silly thing." He tucks her legs behind her and sits on them, and folds her hands on her lap. "You possess more molded pieces of metal than the average person, and suddenly there are so many things you must do."

"You don't have enough, and there are more things you can't," Ymir interjects. She sits up and reads each of their mulling faces. She removes the grass from her mouth. "I was being cynical."

Reiner squints up at the sky. "You do have a point, though." He strokes his chin a bit and then drops his hand to the side to lean on his palm.

Bertholdt puts his arms up, shakes his head and shuffles his feet in place. The three of them glance at him. "What?"

"Seems like every person, no matter the class, wishes they were somewhere else in life," he says. "It's really sad for some reason."

"It's about striking a balance between what you have to do and what you want to do – and most of the time, what you have to do wins," Reiner says.

Ymir scoffs. "That's total bullshit." She flicks the blade of grass off her finger and points with her thumb at her back. "D'you know how I lost my job at the mill? One day the supervisor whipped me, and I was so angry I just turned around and punched him in the face." She lowers her hand. "So what if I was born poor? Doesn't mean I have to put up with anything."

Reiner laughs, and he gets Bertholdt laughing too, a little. "If Bertl or I had ever disagreed with our commanding officer and punched him, we'd have been court-marshaled. Don't go around making all these generalizations."

"I never said you had to share my view," she retorts.

Historia lifts both of her arms, pointing one toward Ymir and the other toward Reiner. "I would say it is all relative," she declares. She claps both hands together and they bring their attention to her. "I remember having a conversation similar to this one a couple of years ago with my cousin Armin, regarding the topic of fate versus free will. He said it is all relative and that life involves a mixture of both, and I agreed with him."

"Well, you certainly don't act like it," Ymir says. "You tolerate practically everything, really, as far as I've seen."

Historia eyes her pointedly. "That is what you think."

The men ooh and laugh, and Reiner pokes Bertholdt in the side with his elbow.

Ymir grins. "I don't think, Historia," she says. "I _know_."

In response Historia shoots her a saccharine grin, the kind she has perfected in her years of cognition – the kind that is either foolish or dangerously, utterly brilliant, Ymir has not quite yet decided.

**XXXII. **

Eren emerges from the backroom in a plain shirt and thin gray trousers, and stirs the coins in his pocket with his finger. He steps past the counter toward the door, but stops at one of the latticed windows beside it. "Aw, shit," he whines, "Of course it starts to rain cats and dogs right when my shift is over."

"Your life is so hard," Levi teases. He scrubs a rag furiously against the bartop. Eren shoots him a frown over his shoulder. Sighing, he stomps to one of the empty tables and plops himself down in a chair.

Ymir laughs to herself and slurps a little of the tequila out of her glass. The few other patrons do not seem to care, though: the old mechanist tinkers with the music player that busted again last night and the pink-faced young man in the middle of the room stares into space. Tonight is particularly low-key, even for a Monday night.

That is, until the door swings open and a mob of young women comes racing in, one of them screaming.

"Get in quick, ladies!"

They're the performers from The Oasis, in full-length dresses and proper shoes and no makeup. One of them stops in the threshold of the door to shake out her umbrella, while some others take their shawls off their heads and smooth their hair once inside.

Hanji struts inside last, her hair in free brown curls and a cape hanging from the shoulders of her modest gray dress – Ymir hardly recognizes her. She lifts a hand to wave, the fringe at the hem of her cape dangling as it rises with her arm. "Yassou fïle mou Levi."

"Bonsoir…" he says. He scans the room to get a count of how many people just poured into his bar. Or maybe to see how much water they tracked in. He slings the rag he's holding over his shoulder and sets his hands on his hips. "What is going on, here?"

"We just did our thousandth show last night, and I wanted to take my employees out to celebrate," Hanji explains. She saunters toward the counter, closer to him.

He looks around at all the ladies again, then glances at Ymir, the spacey man and the mechanist and deems them unproblematic. "Eren." He extends an arm in his employee's direction and snaps his fingers a few times. Eren's head springs off the table.

Levi points at the door. "Since you're here, go watch the door. Tell anyone else who tries to come in that we're closed for the rest of the evening."

Eren moans, sitting up the rest of the way. Levi only furrows his eyebrows at him before he snorts, pushes himself onto his feet, and drags himself to the door. He disappears to stand underneath the sunshade outside.

Mikasa pads over to her boss to say a quiet something about standing outside with her brother. Hanji tells her to be careful and lets her take her leave.

Ymir shifts a bit in her seat. She swears she saw Christa among the other women, but does not see her now.

"What'll you all have?" Levi asks the general crowd.

"Give us the nicest chardonnay you've got," Hanji says. "We'll split it. We don't drink much."

He chews over her choice for a second before he makes his way into the backroom. Meanwhile Hanji heaves herself onto a stool near the middle of the counter, and Hannah and Mina sit on either side of her.

Ymir feels a sharp point stick into her back. Her shoulders tense and she turns around. Christa is standing there with a cheeky smile on her face, her cloak almost completely soaked and black hair damp and frizzy. She giggles, comes forward and puts her hand on Ymir's arm. "How are you?" she asks.

"Gettin' by," Ymir says.

Levi comes out of the backroom holding a wine bottle by the neck. Hanji grins, kicking her legs under her long skirt. "Oh, that's one of my favorite wineries! You remembered." Levi gives her a nod, and digs for seven appropriate glasses, uncorks the bottle, and makes sure to pour an exactly even amount into each glass.

Hannah, Mina and Hanji scoop up their glasses by the stems. Christa walks over to join them and pick up hers, and Annie and Petra make their way to the counter as well. All the women raise their glasses at once as if on a silent cue and clink the rims of them together. "Cheers!" "To a thousand more shows." "We've done great, everyone." And the ladies take synchronized sips, and erupt into giggles upon swallowing.

Hanji grabs another glass. "Anybody mind taking this to Mikasa?" Annie volunteers. Petra wanders to the opposite end of the bar, observing the always-broken clock hanging on the wall.

Christa shuffles back to Ymir and holds her wine glass up to her. "Want some?" she asks, her smile brimming.

Ymir does not hesitate much before taking it, smelling it, and stealing a taste. She smacks her lips together and squints. "It's all right. I'm more into heavy liquors." She returns it to Christa, who slides onto the stool next to hers.

Annie comes back inside, the hem of her dress wet. "Mikasa says 'thank you'," she reports. She seats herself on the stool between Hannah and Ymir, clutching her shawl together with a fist over her chest.

"I'm curious," Mina says. "Why'd you pick this place? Not that it's bad or anything."

"Because Levi and I are buddies," Hanji announces with a grin. "We go way back." She faces him. "Isn't that right, Levi?"

"Get your filthy hand off the counter I just wiped," he says flatly.

The smile instantly disappears from her face. Her eyes go wide, and she crouches low, slams her other hand onto the counter, and rubs her palms all over the polished wood surface with her eyes locked dead on him. She freezes and continues to glare at him until a smile creeps onto her face and she sits up, laughing. He rolls his eyes and turns his head away.

She goes on about how she and Levi have known each other since they were teenagers – before they became entrepreneurs, before he got clean, before she learned to manage her anger through performing.

Christa takes another drink, lowers her glass onto the counter and releases a giddy, high-pitched laugh. Ymir turns to face her. "You're sure in a mood tonight," she says.

"Well, I am very happy," Christa replies. She straightens her back and buries her hands in the collar of her dress. "They're here somewhere," she mutters to herself, sticking out her tongue. At length she pulls out two slips of paper from between her breasts.

She flashes the papers at Ymir. "Do you know what these are?" she asks.

"No," Ymir replies.

Christa leans far in Ymir's direction and lowers the papers between them. "My cousin Armin procured two train tickets for us." Ymir raises both eyebrows. "It is official now. You and I leave on the seventeenth." She fans the two tickets apart in her hand and holds them close to Ymir's face so that she can study them. "Just remember, our names are Margot Dubois and Gertrud Schneider."

"Which one of us is Margot and which is Gertrud?" Ymir asks.

"Hm." Christa brings the tickets closer to her own face and skims them. "I do not know."

Ymir snorts into a laugh, and Christa laughs along with her and separates the tickets, taking one in each hand. She hedges between them and after a moment gives one to Ymir. "You're Margot." She stuffs "Gertrud's" ticket back down her top.

"_Lovely_." Ymir purses her lips at the ticket, – considers folding it in half, but stops herself –, and pockets it.

All the sudden Christa's eyes go wide, and she sets down her glass without having drunk and grabs Ymir by the shoulders. "Are you not just _thrilled_?"

"I will admit, I'm excited," Ymir lilts.

"I still can't wrap my mind around it!" She laughs wildly, and the laugh ceases with a loud, short sigh. "I don't care about anything else anymore, I think about this so much."

"Good for you," Ymir says. Before her mouth can even close, Christa lurches forward and plants her lips on hers. She hums and pulls away with a loud pop. The grin on her face is so wide that it nearly splits her head in two. She laughs again.

Ymir peeks over her shoulder at the other patrons, none of whom seem to have noticed the two of them. "Lord." She turns toward Christa and curls both of her hands around Christa's forearms.

"You wanta get out of here?" she suggests. "I, ah, have my apartment until the end of this month."

Christa's sweet, big blue eyes blink at her several times, uncomprehending, before the meaning descends on her and she clicks her tongue and says, "_Oh_." Her smile disappears for an instant and then reappears even larger than it was before, something Ymir did not think was even physically possible.

"How forward of you," she exclaims, and raises her eyebrows.

Ymir sticks out her chin, scowling. "What?" she grunts.

"I'm just surprised – that is all." Hands still on Ymir's shoulders, she jumps down from her stool, and lets go of her to drink down the last of her wine. "I would love to."

She takes Ymir by the wrist over to her boss, politely interrupting her anecdote.

"I'm leaving," she announces. She starts to dig around in her shirt with her free hand. "How much should I give you for the drink?"

"Oh, no, Christa, I'm covering it." Hanji sets her clutch in her lap, unfastens it and starts to dig around inside it. "Sorry we came in and monopolized everything," she says to Levi behind her. She pulls out a thick wad of bills, glances at him, and thumbs through them. "How much do you usually make on a Monday night? I can pay the difference."

He holds up a hand and shakes his head. She hesitates, but returns the money to the inside of her bag and closes it, smiles, and faces Christa again.

"You are fine," she says. She throws a split-second knowing glance at Ymir. "Kalinihta. I will see you later."

Christa bows with thanks, dons her hood and starts to pull Ymir in the direction of the door. From partway across the room she hears Hanji sigh to the other dancers, "I am going to miss her when she leaves."

They burst through the door and push their way past Eren and Mikasa, paying the siblings no mind, and halfway down the street they stop to exchange a quick kiss. Their pace picks quickens until they are running hand in hand through the rain into Ymir's building.

**XXXIII. **

Historia has scars on her wrists. When she removes her cloak and slips off the top part of her dress, they are the first things Ymir sees. Thin, horizontal, some whitish-pink and raised, some red and rifted. They scream and she stares at them, erupting into a sweat, unable to get any words past the massive lump they make in her throat.

Christa realizes instantly what alarms Ymir so much – she clutches her arms over her chest and shrinks backward. Her eyes go sharp with defensiveness.

Ymir collects herself, gulping hard. She reaches for one of Christa's arms, pulls it toward her, presses the scars to her lips and kisses them. "You and I are too similar," she whispers into her skin.

She yanks it out of Ymir's grasp. "Please do not kiss them." Her voice is like a growl. "These scars are mine and mine alone. Pay them no mind."

Ymir moves her bottom jaw back and forth. She grunts once and says, "Fair enough," and continues to peck down Christa's craned neck. With one hand she pulls back the ends of the black wig in her way as the other snakes up underneath her camisole.

A silent sigh leaks out of Christa's throat. She runs her fingers along Ymir's spine, making the other woman shudder.

Suddenly Ymir looks up. They meet eyes. "What do you want me to call you, Historia or Christa?" She speaks so quickly that the words almost run together.

"Either is fine," she blurts, but then she thinks for a second, gritting her teeth. "Christa." She gives Ymir an affirming nod.

"_Christa_," Ymir moans. She grabs the hem of her camisole with both hands and flips it up over her head, past her arms, and tosses it on top of the cloak heaped by the bedside. She traces the curves of her smooth exposed skin, running her thumbs parallel on either side of her stomach. Her abdominal muscles tense at the sensation, and she gasps sharply, "Ymir!"

She throws her arms around Ymir's bare shoulders and leans backward, and Ymir lays her down until her back meets the itchy blanket, pressing sloppy wet kisses along the base of her neck. Her hands reach upward to palm Christa's breasts. She grazes her teeth over the bulge of Christa's collarbone.

Christa's breaths come in terse gasps and high-pitched sighs. She buries her fingers in Ymir's short hair. One of her hands ghosts down the back of Ymir's neck to the old lash wounds crossing her upper back. Ymir hisses and arches her spine at the sensitivity. Christa giggles, her belly convulsing. "Ymir," she taunts.

At this Ymir stops, and presses the tip of her nose to Christa's shoulder. She brings her hands downward from her chest to her hipbones, and she sits up, and blinks at her with softened golden-brown eyes and bites her lip.

"Would you call me by my real name?"

Christa squeezes her eyes shut. "What's that?"

Ymir hesitates; she sits there with her hips between Christa's calves, staring at her through the dim light.

"Mary," she murmurs. Her eyes go wide and scan Christa's naked torso before her – the lean muscles, the birthmark beside her navel, the golden blond hairs peaking out from beneath the wig – just to be sure the girl doesn't disappear at the word.

Christa's breath hitches as she opens her eyes and looks Ymir in the face. "Mary?"

She nods. "Mary Hummel. That's the name I was born with."

A small smile curls Christa's lips as she blinks at Ymir long and slow.

"Mary," she breathes. "That's beautiful."

"Naw, it's not – it's too common and boring," Ymir says, but she smiles back.

Christa giggles, sits up using just her abdominal muscles, beams straight into Ymir's eyes with her own, and puts one hand on her shoulder and the other just above her breast. She leans forward and whispers "Mary" against the outside of Ymir's ear.

Ymir shudders and recoils a bit with a turn of the head. Christa pulls away, laughing. "Mary," she says again, and she presses her forehead to Ymir's clavicle. Her fingers lightly trace between Ymir's breasts, down the slight bump of her stomach, across her belly button, to the waist of her trousers but then stop there. Ymir fails to hold back another shudder. She spreads her legs a little wider and wraps one arm at a time around Christa's upper back, and Christa rubs her hand across her hip and settles on the bony bulge at the side. Her thin fingers curl around Ymir's side and her other thumb digs into Ymir's shoulder. Ymir's eyes flutter shut and she lays her head on top of Christa's, and pictures her beautiful hands.

**XXXIV. **

The only light in the room comes from the gaslamps lining the street outside the dingy, cracked window; they can hear the faint whistle of electricity those lamps emit.

Christa lies halfway on top of Ymir, not quite asleep, her hands tucked underneath her and one leg tangled between the other woman's and her eyes closed and her face pressed against her sternum. Ymir pets the girl's hair as she stares at the water-damaged ceiling. Her blinks get slower and longer by the minute. She clicks her tongue, raises her head just barely off the pillow, and presses a soft kiss to Christa's wig. Christa hums once and smiles. The room is filled with warmth, most concentrated between their skins.

Her chest feels painfully heavy – not heavy with the weight of the head on top of it, but from a hot, dense internal pressure. She pushes her head into the cushion and grits her teeth. She inhales deeply and sighs, and her eyelids close. "Christa?"

The girl's head rotates a bit so that her reply is not muffled. "Yes?"

A heavy feeling solidifies in the air. Ymir opens her lips, but no sound escapes them at first. She takes a chunk of black hair in her fist.

"I'm glad you decided to leave with me," she stammers.

"Really?"

Ymir nods. Her throat constricts, muscles tense. She bends one leg and straightens it.

"When we leave, there is something I need to you accomplish for me," she admits.

One of Christa's arms contorts out from underneath her, slides across Ymir's stomach, finds her free hand and grabs it. Christa's hand is soft and smooth and delicate, having never known hard work. Ymir's hand is knobby and calloused. Their fingers mesh together. "Anything," Christa says.

Ymir gulps but the mass in her throat does not move. She shudders and holds back sweat. She takes a breath, and opens her mouth. The words do not come out for another minute.

"I killed a man when I was sixteen," she confesses. She squeezes Christa's hand. "I had fallen in with a bad crowd. We were smoking poppy and drinking one day when one of my friends suggested that we – we kill somebody. We all took it as a joke but I didn't realize he was serious until I was already doing it.

"We found this one bloke we barely knew, and. And we kidnapped him, beat him. Took him out to a field and chopped his head off, with a hatchet."

Christa's eyes are wide open now. She listens with one ear to the rapid heartbeat inside the chest on which she lays, and with the other to the desperate, trembling voice. She gulps, and a cold chill stands the invisible hairs on her arms, but she does not say a word.

Ymir chomps on her bottom lip. "His name was Berik." She forces herself to take in a breath that doesn't come back out. "He was my age then, Christa. He was a kid just like me." Her stomach coils into cold knots. "If I had said something or done something to get them to stop – I was there the whole time, I could have, and he could have lived. He could have held some big fancy important job, or gotten married, or something, by now. But I took his entire future. I took a son from his family. All for nothing. No good reason at all." The air finally leaves her in a shaky sigh. "And now his life is gone and mine is fucked up, all because I made one stupid decision."

She draws another breath, sharply, through the nose. Christa grinds her teeth together behind her lips.

"That was when I ran, because it made me realize my existence never did anyone any good. My old friends told me since then that the police in my hometown have given up Berik's case, and I can come home safely now. But I can't do it. I just can't. And I just keep running from one place to another to escape what I've done."

At this Ymir's eyes finally open. She peers down at the slender arm on her stomach, noting the thin stripes running horizontally along the inner wrist, halfway up to the elbow.

"I used to be like you, Christa – so much like you. I never did anything for myself, and I got screwed over so many times because of that." She rubs her thumb on the edge of Christa's hand. Christa does the same. Her heavenly touch sends shivers up Ymir's bones.

"Do you know, I actually came here and got a job at the Reiss estate because I wanted to rob you guys and split? I had done that a few other places. I had plans laid out and everything." Christa's thumb stops moving. "I wasn't too far from executing them when I ran into you escaping that night."

Christa hums once quietly, as if in acknowledgement. A sore smile tugs the corners of Ymir's lips backward.

"Being with you made me decide that I don't want to run from who I am anymore. I've gone by the name Ymir for so many years but still thought of myself as Mary Hummel, Mary Hummel who is an awful person, Mary Hummel who did something unforgivable and never owned up to it.

"With you, I can finally move on from being Mary. You could help me. And if I have someone with me who has influence or money, I might even stay out of prison."

She lifts her and Christa's hands off the mattress and looks down at them, and her quivering smile widens. "Then, let's live together without last names. Christa and Ymir, Ymir and Christa. Or Gertrud and Margot, or whatever names we want." She angles her head to get a look at Christa's expression, blinking hopefully at the loose black and blond hairs covering it.

"What do you say?" Ymir asks.

At first, Christa hesitates. Her eyes stay trained wide-open on the wall closest to their nude bodies. The thoughts clank through her brain, grinding gears, shooting steam.

She pulls her other arm out from under her, and uses it as leverage to push herself up, lifting her head. Her hips rotate so that her knees push into the mattress to hold up her frame.

"I told you," she proclaims, "I am on your side, Ymir." She looks straight into Ymir's eyes.

Ymir's lips open, showing her teeth. "You are an angel," she says. Christa cocks her head, and a small smile curves her mouth.

**XXXV. **

Simon's office is actually different from how she envisioned it, Ymir thinks, coming in for the first time. The area is spacious, the dark cherry floor shines. Paintings of Reiss patriarchs past, each looking at once austere and mischievous, line the walls in matching gold frames. Ymir has only a few seconds to take in the sights before Simon beckons her toward his imposing wooden desk.

She seats herself in a stiff chair facing him. His piercing blue eyes read her body language for a moment, and he sighs and pulls the glasses off his face.

"You are Ymir, right? You work in the stables?" he says, his voice heavy.

She nearly comes out with "what, you don't recognize me even though you see me with your stupid thoroughbred every damn day?", but bites her tongue and simply gives him a "yes." He even sent Jean to bring her here, too.

He taps the tip of his index finger to his tongue and starts to pick through a small pile of documents. "This morning, one of your fellow staff members approached me, and filed a report implicating you of a crime against us." His hand stops moving. His eyes fall on her face. "I simply cannot have that."

"You're going to take someone else's word on my actions instead of my own?" she snarls.

"Of course not; I am not that unjust," he says. He looks beyond her, and at this Ymir hears the door close and turns around.

The young man steps into the room, stands beside Ymir's chair, pauses, and then takes his own seat. His hands do not tremble and skin does not sweat. She raises her eyebrows. He glances at her, his eyes more intense than she ever has seen them or thought they could be.

"You?" she says under her breath. "_Bertholdt_?"

She frowns in Simon's direction and leans forward. "Is this for real?" she asks, pointing a thumb at Bertholdt.

"Master Fubar has reason to believe you are a thief," Simon claims.

Ymir leans back, slices both arms through the air and shakes her head. "What makes him say that? I didn't prig nothing."

Simon gestures to the other man with a nod. "Ask him, then."

She cranes her neck to face Bertholdt, who keeps his expression straight and his gaze focused. She can sense his heart thumping in his chest.

"I saw you, the other day, ransacking Lady Historia's chamber room," he says. His eyes shift from her to Simon. "I cannot confirm what she was doing there, but once I did hear her say to herself, 'Where is it?'"

"Yeah, okay, I was in Historia's room tearing sh—stuff apart, but she had _asked _me to be there," she rebukes, crossing her arms. "I was looking for something for her. Something she misplaced and wanted me to get."

"What had she misplaced that you were charged to find?" Simon asks.

"A hairband," Ymir blurts. She rolls her eyes over the back wall of the room and then moves with calculation, leaning back and kicking her legs further apart. "I never ended up finding it, either, the bugger."

Simon grunts once, meshes his hands together, lays his elbows atop his desk and presses his fingers to his lips. The clock hanging above the fireplace, its exposed gears turning and pendulum swaying, ticks through the seconds.

"Why would my daughter want you, a stable worker, to retrieve the hairband, and not, say, Rico, her personal assistant?" Simon says.

Ymir half-shrugs. "I don't know." She releases one arm from over her chest to show an empty palm.

The corners of Bertholdt's lips twitch downward. "Even overlooking that," he says slowly, "There is one thing – and I am not sure whether you have noticed or not, Lord Simon." He turns to face Ymir, as his eyes flit back and forth between him and her. "Historia has not been wearing her engagement ring as of late."

Simon raises his eyebrows. "I do not think I have noticed that," he admits, mumbling into his hands. He lifts his head slightly. "Ymir, do you care to provide an answer for that?" A kind of hostility settles in his features.

Her neck stiffens and the blood in her limbs ices. For a second, a split second she considers dismissing the accusation – "What would I do with a wedding ring?" "Why would I steal anything from Historia?" "She must have lost it." – but. But.

She drops both arms to her sides, rolls her head over the back of the chair, and blows a breath past her lips. She rights her head and clicks her tongue against her teeth.

"All _right_," she groans. "I stole it. I fucking stole the ring, okay? I saw it lying there in her vanity drawer because she had taken it off for her dance lesson, and I just took it."

Bertholdt hardly moves, but Simon blinks hard and lowers his hands in alarm. His eyes pore over her with a lack of the restraint he holds in the rest of his body.

"Okay," he whispers, at length. He takes his hands apart to steeple his fingertips together in thought.

"Ymir, I will not fire you, only put you on probation and dock your salary, if you return the ring right now," Simon demands.

Ymir throws her arms apart. "I can't," she says. "I sold it to a pawnshop. It's probably long gone by now."

Simon's blue eyes alight with hellfire. His hands come apart and ball into fists, and the shallow wrinkles in his face become chasms, and his muscles contract and tighten, and the veins over his temples pop as he gnashes his teeth. The very edges of his ears grow red.

She smirks and kicks one leg over the other. "I got top dollar for it, too," she adds.

He crashes to his feet, slams his hands on the desk. His chest heaves under his suit. Calmly she lowers her arms onto the armrests at her sides, and her smile widens.

And then he takes a deep breath and collapses into his chair. He relaxes his shoulders, spreads his fingers, and shuts his eyes. The air sighs out of his lungs. His eyes open and land on portraits of his father, grandfather, great-grandfather.

"I am a Reiss," he recites, "And therefore, I must be merciful." He picks up his eyeglasses, slides them over his nose, and directs his gaze at Ymir.

"You are free to lead a life of crime if you choose, but that will not be tolerated here. Please leave the property immediately, and do not return," he growls.

Ymir rises from her chair. "I'm sick of shoveling horse-shit every day, anyway." She turns her head to glare down at Bertholdt, whose gaze remains steady and focused on her. Her eyebrows furrow as she maintains her rotten smile.

Bertholdt opens his lips, narrows his eyes, and mouths something that Ymir does not register at first – but for an instant, his eyes burn with such a helpless rage that she has to catch her breath.

Her lips straighten. She tears her eyes away from him, turns on her heels and marches out of Simon's office, out of the mansion, off the property, down the street. All the sudden she stops when Bertholdt's words hit her, and, shaking, fumbles for her flask and swigs down every drop left inside it.

_That's for Berik_.

**XXXVI. **

Levi looks over at the pieces and parts spread on the floor where his music-playing machine used to be, and he shakes his head. He tells the mechanist again that it's a futile effort, fixing the thing, and he should just give up and rest his old joints and he'll go buy a new player next week, since he can afford it with the change the old one accumulated over the years.

The mechanist meets his eyes. He stares at Levi and seems for a second to almost consider quitting, but at length he turns toward his work and sifts through a mess of bolts. "I've nearly got it," he says. "I will rebuild it, better than it was before."

Levi scowls. "You're wasting your time," he starts, but his voice trails off. He makes his way to a customer who's just flagged him down for a refill. Seems like the mechanist would rather spend his time on this than anything else, really, if he has anything else.

The setting sun flashes bright through the door when it opens, and Christa slips inside and takes down her hood. She spots Ymir instantly and comes to her.

"There you are. I knew you would be here."

Ymir squeezes her eyes shut, sets her glass on the counter and hunches over it. "Leave me alone," she mutters.

Christa looks Ymir up and down, frowning. Her eyes are bloodshot, her short hair disheveled, her words slurred.

"Ymir, I am so very sorry I could not prevent my father from—"

"'Salright," Ymir says with a great sigh. "If I'd-a told him the truth, woulda made 'n even bigger problem f'r us." She takes a large gulp of her drink.

Christa bites the inside of her bottom lip, and angles her head downward a minute to think. "I suppose you are right."

"I'm always right," Ymir mumbles. She sniffles and faces Christa. "Time is it?" she asks.

"It is just after five o'clock."

She's been here since… noon? Ten a.m.? She can't really remember. But five is about the time customers start to flood the place, historically speaking.

"Don't you have work?" Ymir says.

Christa nods. "I do. Tonight is my last night, in fact. I am coming in a little early to talk with Hanji and receive my going-away bonus." She stretches her shoulders backward, holds the position for half a minute and then relaxes.

Ymir grunts and looks into her glass, finding the color of the liquid inside fascinating all the sudden. "I'll try to come see you dance," she says.

"There is no need for that," Christa says, holding up a hand. She smiles for a second. "I may be in tears by the end of the show. I know how much you hate seeing me cry."

Ymir clicks her tongue against her teeth, turns away, and after taking a moment to process her thoughts, nods.

Behind them, Levi greets his assistant with a curt "you're late."

"Sorry, sir," Eren says.

He ducks into the backroom and comes out tying an apron around his waist. Christa turns around to identify the commotion, and she sees Armin sitting on a stool at the opposite end of the counter. He smiles and waves at her and she waves back. Eren glances between them, pointing to her. "I forget, how are you and Christa related, again?" he asks him. Armin replies that they're cousins. "Oh, right."

She swallows hard and returns to Ymir, and lays a hand on her chest. "Do you still have your train ticket, Ymir?"

Ymir has to think a moment before she remembers where she left hers, before she even remembers what it is. "Yup." Sticking out her tongue, she sets down her glass, leans to one side, and pulls the slip of paper out of her back pocket. A corner is bent and wrinkled, but otherwise she's kept it in good condition.

Christa removes hers from her top and holds it up for Ymir to see.

"You shouldn't just carry yers around like that, ya know," Ymir says. "Could fall out 'r something."

"I could tell you the same thing," Christa says with a small frown.

Ymir, holding her ticket between her index and middle fingers, waves it back and forth. "Hey, my 'partment's been broken into twice – naw, thrice since I moved here. I've a' excuse." At this she chuckles and touches her ticket to Christa's.

"_Gertrud_."

"Margot," Christa replies. She smiles so that her nose crinkles, and she leans forward and brings her face close to Ymir's. Ymir backs up a few inches.

"Don't kiss me," she warns, "My breath alone'll make ya sick."

Christa blinks up at her a few times, pulls away, grabs Ymir's wrist with her free hand and kisses Margot's ticket. "There," she says. Ymir lets out a breathy laugh.

Her arms shrink into her cloak and she drops her ticket down her shirt collar. Then she leans forward again and brushes her lips against Ymir's cheek.

She looks into Ymir's bleary, swimming eyes. She lays her hands on the sides of Ymir's shoulders, opens her mouth – and her eyelashes flit up and down as she takes in the texture of her skin. The smell plows into her lungs all at once, stinging her throat. Her face pales.

"Sorry." She tears her whole body away from Ymir's, turns on her heels, and clutches her sides.

"Fer what?" Ymir asks.

Christa glances around the room. "I should not think in such a way – not in front of everyone," she whispers, to herself more than anything. She draws her hood over her head and looks over the shoulder at her.

"Please, do not drink too much more," she says.

Ymir grins, exposing all her teeth. She feels chilled and heavy like an old rock in an ocean, bombarded with waves on all sides. "Only 'til I'm stupid," she jokes.

Christa sighs, faces forward, straightens her skirt and starts toward the door. She mumbles to herself about how things are going to change, how she's going to leave everything behind on the seventeenth, in two days. On her way out, she gives a regarding nod to the mechanist's sprawling mess.

**XXXVII. **

The dining room is quiet, with the family accumulated at one end of the long center table. The wait staff set the second course in front of them.

Simon keeps stealing glances at his daughter's hand. Yesterday he gave her his late mother's ring to replace the one that treacherous stablewoman swindled, and she gave him a smile in response. He furrows his eyebrows.

"Reiner." He turns toward the muscular young man seated not too far from him. "Historia's first ring was from your grandmother, is that correct?"

Reiner nods. He works through the food in his mouth and sets down his fork. "Yes, and she was widowed while I was away serving our country, so she was thrilled to let Historia and me use it."

"What a shame," Simon mumbles with a shake of his head.

Historia blinks nervously at her fiancé, then buries her attention in her food.

"You know, Father," Adair says, "In my opinion, you should have sent that woman to prison when you fired her." He continues to speak to Simon, but his eyes point to Reiner.

"I am not the law, Adair. It is not my place to punish her any further than taking away her job. The only thing we can do now is hope the justice system acts accordingly."

"I say forget the courts," Adair asserts. "Too many loopholes and not enough results. You have seen the slums on the south side of town. Mere debtors are confined in cages while _murderers_ walk free." He tears a piece of fish off his fork between his teeth. "Perhaps taking more action regarding that thief would have even taught Mister Braun a lesson or two about taking responsibility for _mistakes_."

"With all due respect," Reiner says, grimacing and holding out a flat hand, "I am the oldest of six children, and a war veteran. I know about responsibility."

"Being the oldest child and a war veteran does not a responsible gentleman make," Adair quips.

And at that, the air around the table becomes heavy as lead. It settles cold and solid in everyone's stomachs. No one dares make a sound. No one dares to look at one another.

Historia's wrist goes weak, and she drops the fork in her hand a short distance onto her plate. The clattering noise shatters the dense quiet, if only for an instant.

Magdalena adjusts herself by a few inches in her chair and clears her throat. "Supper tonight certainly is lovely," she says in a saccharine voice. She digs into the center of her char with her fork. "Would you agree?"

"I do not care for fish," Simon mutters under his breath, keeping his head down.

A pause ensues. Magdalena's expectant eyes land on each of the others at the table, but she is met with no response and returns to taking another bite while retaining as much dignity as she can.

Wynonna coughs into her napkin and then lowers it onto her lap with both hands. She glances about. "I spoke to our private physician today," she says.

"Oh?" Magdalena, and everyone else, looks at her. "Is something wrong? Have you fallen ill?"

"I am with child," Wynonna says.

Magdalena's eyes grow to the size of saucers. She grins, her laugh lines making rifts from the corners of her lips to her nose.

"You are?" she squeals. Wynonna nods with a "yes."

"Do you mean I am finally going to have a grandchild?" Magdalena leans toward her, her hands pressed together in front of her.

"One would assume so," Wynonna says proudly.

Adair, having already learned the news a few hours beforehand, smirks and bows his head at his food.

Magdalena grabs onto her husband's jacket sleeve and tugs it. "Dear, is this not the most wonderful news?"

For the first time in a very long while, Simon has a smile on his face – a shallow, pale, cautious and somehow insidious-looking smile, as if his head muscles have forgotten how to form such an expression. "It is wonderful," he says.

"Congratulations," Reiner says, aiming a grin in Wynonna's direction.

"Thank you all," Wynonna replies. She meshes her fingers together and presses them to her stomach, as if something is there yet.

"Historia," Magdalena says, craning her neck toward her daughter, "This is _phenomenally_ exciting, is it not?"

Every pair of eyes lands on Historia, who sits withdrawn at her seat, only half paying attention, one arm across her waist to hold up the other as she covers the lower half of her face with bent fingers. She regards them, clear blue eyes tired. At length she clicks her tongue against her teeth, brings her hand away from her face a little, opens her mouth – and closes her lips and touches her knuckles to them again. She blinks slowly and nods.

Magdalena's expression flattens, and she releases her grip on Simon's jacket. "What is wrong, Historia?"

"Nothing," she says quietly. She lowers her hand to tuck it against her clavicle. "I simply have many things on my mind at the moment. That is all." She leans forward, grabs the edge of the table, and starts to stand. "If I am bringing down the mood, I will leave. Excuse me."

Historia refuses help from one of the waiting staff in getting up. Her entire family watches her slink to the French doors with her hands folded in front of her and her head down. She stops in the doorway and turns to them.

"It is not your fault – I do not wish to detract from Wynonna's happy news. I apologize." She glances at her brother, sister-in-law. "Congratulations." The door closes heavy behind her.

Reiner's eyes stay on the doors for a full minute after she departs, until Simon addresses him: "I know what you are thinking of doing." Reiner snaps his attention toward the man. "You should stay here and finish your meal. She will be fine."

Reiner stares at him, his features sunken. He steals another glance at the doors. "All right," he hesitates. He has to tear his gaze away from the doors to pick up his fork and begin to eat again.

**XXXVIII. **

The post-dusk air is thick and blue, and the wood frame of the structure creaks with insects and age. Inside feels soupy, stagnant, warm from the recent series of storms.

Historia clings to her horse, stroking one hand down its neck over and over. Vega lowers her head to press her muzzle against the back of her owner's shoulder.

"I am going to miss you," she whispers. Her hand stops moving. "I know this sounds silly, but you are one of my dearest friends." She bites her lip, throws her head toward the rafters and sniffles.

She hears noise approaching from outside. Her heart falls off-beat, and she tries to slink to the back of the stall to hide, but does not realize until she is out of reach of it that the door is unlocked and the gate open.

A figure appears in the doorway, scans the room, and starts toward her. "There you are."

She pokes her head around the post on which she's leaning. "Oh, Reiner," she breathes. Trying to shake the hard lump in her throat and the sweat coating the back of her neck, she slips through the gate and meets him.

"I figured you would be here, if not in your bedroom," he says.

"—Ah, yes!" She struggles to fake a smile, and glances in a few different directions as if she forgot where she is for half a second. "I do like to come here when I want to be alone," she says. "It seems so very Reiss-like of me to desire the company of horses, does it not?"

He chuckles once. "I don't see any other people in your family spending a whole night sleeping in their horse's stall."

"Oh, that." She sets a hand on the cool metal gate to close it. "I had tried falling asleep in my own bed, but could not."

"So, it was one of those nights," he says.

She tilts her head. "Many of those nights, actually, as of late. I had only overslept that morning."

He nods and looks around at the rafters above and the compacted dirt below. "I understand the feeling," he says.

A beat – the air they breathe is motionless, thick with haydust and mildew.

"You are leaving soon, aren't you?" he asks.

"Yes," she answers. She turns toward her horse. "Tomorrow."

He regards her, his head bobbing up and down slowly. He watches her cup Vega's chin in her left hand. "Shouldn't you be happy, then?"

"I just…" She pulls her fingers out from underneath her horse's head and drops the arm to her side, and faces him.

"I have reservations," she says with a sigh.

He reaches for her. His fingertips barely graze her arm. He pivots and directs his eyes toward the door. "I think we should discuss this in fresh air." He lowers his arm and she nods, and the two of them start for the exit.

"You have reservations?" he asks, craning his neck downward to see her.

She takes in a breath as she opens her mouth, but halts, and bows her head. "You do not have to listen to my troubles," she says.

They duck out of the stable, and he drags the great wooden door shut and latches it. "In my experience, no good can come from holding in emotions. Not for long, at least. I do not mind lending a listening ear, if you do not mind feeding it." He looks at her again and smiles. "Please, enlighten me."

All at once the corset beneath her clothes becomes impossibly tight. A cold, hard sensation coagulates at the back of her throat and falls to her stomach.

The two of them head side by side toward the corral; when they reach the fence, they walk along the length of it.

"I feel as though I am not solving any problems for anyone by running away – only making everything worse," she enunciates. She inhales deeply, but it is ineffectual.

"Well, Historia, I say you should take your mind off everyone else and do what you feel is right for _you_."

Their shoes make sloshing sounds hitting the soft ground. She lifts her skirt to keep from dirtying the hem. "I do not even know what is right for me anymore," she says. "I cannot escape the feeling that I will cause trouble no matter which path I decide to take." She turns to view him, and looks beyond him to the empty black space inside the crescent moon. She kicks out a leg to pull her sole out of the dirt. "There is no way out."

He gives her a glance and then faces forward, and begins to take steps in a different direction to steer them out of the muddy grass.

"You haven't told me many of the details in your plot to run away, but I know you've put a mighty amount of effort into it, and that alone is admirable," he says. "You were so sure of yourself before."

Her features harden just slightly. She lowers her head. Tensing and relaxing his shoulders, he slips his hands into his trouser pockets one at a time.

"I was actually glad when you told me you were leaving. I knew that we wouldn't have to go through with the marriage because of it." He tries to smile. "The whole reason my family so expressly made me pursue joining yours is because mine is quickly losing money. Now that the war is over, the factories have no need for our business anymore, and they are canceling their deals with us. We lose more money every day."

She looks up at him, her lips hanging open.

"My parents figured that if we married into the Reiss family, which has always been economically stable, we might be able to keep out of the poor house, even if our company fails outright. They only want to use your family as a crutch, really, through you and me." He takes in a breath, hunches his shoulders, releases it gradually, slackens.

Another drop of coldness forms in her mouth but lodges above her lungs. She blinks at him, bites her lip, and looks away. "Then, in that case," she says, "It is in the Brauns' best interest that you and I do not join in matrimony." She comes just an inch closer to him.

"I am actually illegitimate, you see." He looks at her with raised eyebrows. "Simon raised me as his own, but he is not my biological father, and since he controls our family's funds, if worse should come to worse, he could claim that I have no connection to the Reiss fortune and deny me any share of it at all."

"It's a good thing we've exchanged this information," he says with an almost-laugh. They meet eyes, and she nods and turns away. "Indeed."

Her chest feels overwhelmingly dense in the brief silence that follows.

He clears his throat, but his voice breaks on the first syllable. "Besides, I – well. I do not feel anything romantic toward you." His hands ball into fists inside his pockets. "Do you know that person I said I would be seeing secretly on the side? That's Bertholdt. I am in love with him." He clears his throat again. Somehow, despite the clear apprehension, there is a sense of pride in his voice at the declaration, as if he has never been able to confidently tell a person such a thing until now.

"How curious," she says. They ease to a stop, and turn a little to face each other. "Do you know I made the plan to run away with Ymir? She and I have already lain together."

He chuckles – the sound comes from deep within, rattles his broad chest, flourishes over his whole face.

"Aren't you and I just a couple of hopeless souls," he says.

She smiles, and it hurts, stings on her skin. Chills ravage up her back. She opens her mouth, but "Reiner" is all that shoots off her tongue, the air burrowing sharp down her throat.

He sticks his thumbs out of his pockets, hooking them in belt loops. "Yes?"

Her lips shut and teeth grind together behind them. She swallows hard. She lifts her head.

She stares at him through the strands of hair that have not quite fallen away from her eyes, her breathing heavy, her mind slow and frozen.

At last, Historia takes half a step closer to him, opens her arms and wraps them around his thick, hard waist, and presses her cheek to his massive chest. The warmth that emanates from beneath his jacket is light, pure, dry. She shuts her eyes into it and takes a deep breath that does not quite fill her lungs. He takes his hands out of his pockets, and lays one on the back of her head and the other tentatively between her shoulderblades.

"Thank you," she says. "Thank you so much, for everything. I could not have asked for someone more understanding."

His fingers curl a bit, sifting through her hair. His breathing is steady. "Whatever you decide, it has been a pleasure knowing you, Historia Reiss." He strokes down her head, her neck, to where the other hand rests and leaves both there.

She hangs on him another moment or two or forever, she doesn't know – deep down, waiting for him to grab her by the arms with his great muscles and either hold her close or push her away, or press his thumbs hard to her temples to erase all the thoughts from her head, but such a movement never happens and it nearly brings her to tears. She feels a crushing weight all around her. The instant her mind stops, at any point, she cannot breathe.

Her arms uncoil, slide off the fabric of his coat, and fall to her sides. He lifts his hands off her back. She rises onto her tiptoes and her chin brushes over his shoulder as she brings her lips to his ear.

"Be brave, Reiner," she whispers. She eases back onto her heels, dragging her hands down his chest.

For one minute more, she lingers, heart pounding and lungs faltering. She wants to burst into a million bloody bits.

But she steps away, wading through the mud to the stables, and he watches the fading glow of her blond hair in the starlight.

**XXXIX. **

"What'll it be?" Levi asks. He swipes his fingers along the inner rim of the mug he's holding to ensure its dryness and then stows it under the counter.

Ymir shakes her head. "I'm not having anything today, Levi," she says. "I'm just here to wait."

Her head hurts quite a lot, has since this morning. She rubs the soft gray patches of skin under her eyelids.

"Oh?"

"Yup," she declares. "I'm skipping town today. Going to start my new, new life." She bends over to pick up the ratty bag she bought at the jerryshop yesterday and has filled with every one of her meager belongings, and holds it over the counter.

He lifts his chin and looks at it a moment. "Good for you," he says. She smiles with just one side of her mouth, and drops the bag to the floor. He shuffles away in order to tend to someone else.

A man walks up to the bar and seats himself on the stool where the old mechanist has always sat. She props an elbow on the counter to rest her jaw in her hand. Frowning a bit, she glances at the wall against which the music player used to stand. The mechanist has not visited Wings of Freedom since before yesterday; in this time Levi has found he can't stand the mess and swept all the pieces of music player into a pile by one of the back booths.

Her eyes wander to the clock near the ceiling. She studies it for a full minute before remembering the hands do not ever move away from 5:00. She pulls on the chain attached to her pocketwatch and reads its face through the cracked glass.

Then she shoves it into its hiding place, lifts her head and slams her hand on the countertop. "Aw, hell." She turns toward Levi, whose eyes dart to her from halfway across the bar. "Give me a shot of something."

He raises an eyebrow. "You sure?"

She nods, takes a doubloon out of her pocket and waggles it at him between two fingers. "A little something to wet my whistle before I skip town ain't gonna hurt anything." He sucks his teeth and pulls out a shot glass.

He sets her drink in front of her. She grins into it, swipes it up, pours it into her mouth, swishes it between her cheeks to take in the flavor, and swallows it just when her eyes start to water. She puts down the glass and drops the doubloon right beside it.

At this she turns on the stool and jumps off. She grabs her bag, slinging it over her shoulder. "See you," she says. She throws him a wave and saunters across the dining room floor. Her free hand slides into her back trouser pocket to take out the ticket – Margot Dubois' train ticket, the ticket to everything. Ymir presses it to her smiling lips.


End file.
